


Red and Black

by Velvedere



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force collars, Light Bondage, M/M, Multi, UST, background Kalluzeb, being generally mean to Kanan, dark side Ezra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-05-19 11:33:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5965879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velvedere/pseuds/Velvedere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kanan has been captured, and darkside!Ezra comes to visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Kanan lifted his head in the dark. He turned it to one side, then the other, wincing as small stabs of pain lanced through the cords and muscles in his neck. He heard his own stiff joints groan and snap. The pounding in his head started up again, just when he’d thought it had finally gone.

He dropped his chin back down to his chest, sighing heavily. The relief any movement brought to the sore ache in his neck and shoulders was temporary, but it felt good. He’d long since lost track of just how long he’d been there, locked in the dark, but his arms had been strung up for most of it.

 _Too long,_ thought the part of him that still had the energy to be sardonic. The others should have come up with at least three rescue plans by now.

Not that he was counting on being rescued.

He’d been bound with his arms behind him, pulled up and over the level of his head so that he was forced into a kneel, leaning far forward with his head bowed over his knees. The angle was awful for his back, and he couldn’t look at much besides the floor without straining. He clenched his hands now and again to keep sensation in them, though his wrists throbbed as much as every other part of him.

The room around him was dark, lit only by a faint red glow from recessed lighting along the edge of the floor.

 _Typical Sith,_ he thought. Or was it Imperial? They weren’t always two different things.

If it weren’t for the Force collar around his neck, Kanan might have been able to sense what was beyond the flat gray walls of his cell. It didn’t take much to guess: long featureless corridors with no cover whatsoever, sealed blast doors between them, and lots and lots of stormtroopers. Even without his ability to use the Force cut off, chances of escape were slim.

Kanan still really didn’t like this collar. It itched, and he felt blind without the Force.

It seemed the Empire wasn’t taking any chances with him.

…no.

No, not the Empire.

Kanan closed his eyes and tried not to think. Tried to keep down the instant response that cynical part of him felt the need to supply. He tried, but the thought came unbidden, deep from the part of him that would have rather forgotten.

It wasn’t the Empire who knew better.

Kanan let out his breath in a frustrated sigh. This wasn’t the time to get distracted. He clenched his hands tight and tugged against his restraints, testing their integrity one more time. They were energy bindings attached to durasteel shackles. Nothing a lightsaber wouldn’t have been able to handle. There was a little bit of give to the bindings, but not much. If he kept pulling on them, pushing their limits, then maybe he could—

There was the sound of bootsteps outside, marching in formation. Then the click-hiss of a lock. The door slid open, spilling bright light into the room that Kanan flinched against.

“Oh no,” said a voice, at once instantly and painfully familiar. “No, no, no, no, no…”

A shadow darted through the rectangle of light. Kanan felt hands land on his face, fingers pushing back the loose parts of his hair. He blinked until his eyes adjusted.

They came to focus on Ezra, his deep blue eyes looking up to him through the shadows cast from the door. His expression cringed as he looked with rueful sorrow over the cuts and bruises that decorated Kanan’s face. They’d stopped bleeding a while ago.

“I told them not to do this,” he said, voice tight in sympathy.

Kanan smirked.

“In their defense,” he said. “I did put up a fight.”

The Imperials who had grabbed him were in a much worse state somewhere. But even Kanan could only take so many hits from a stun gun.

Ezra sat back on his knees, shaking his head. His eyes were soft and familiar when they looked back to him, but Kanan twisted his face away. He didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to think nothing could have changed since the last time they spoke. It had been just a few days ago, hadn’t it? Maybe not even that. He wanted to think he was still just Ezra.

But then – that part of him again, deeper down – remembered looking up at Ezra while he and the others fought for their lives at the bottom of a ravine outside the Sith temple. They were outnumbered. Outgunned. And Ezra had watched them from the top of the ridge.

He’d looked on, resignation in his face and in his stance. Then he’d turned and walked away. Leaving them to their fate.

A dark hooded figure moved beside him.

The others had gotten out. Kanan had made the sacrifice play – again – to give them time to escape.

But he couldn’t forget that look in Ezra’s eyes.

So he kept his own down, fixed sternly on the floor.

“I’m so sorry this happened,” Ezra mumbled.

“Not as sorry as I am,” said Kanan.

“I told you not to come here. You shouldn’t have followed me! Why did you?”

Kanan rolled his eyes.

“Silly us. We thought you needed rescuing.”

“I didn’t.”

“I know. It’s a lot worse than that.”

Ezra’s mouth opened, and for a moment he looked taken aback. As if he was shocked. As if Kanan was the one who had betrayed them. As if he’d made the choice to throw away everything they’d worked for and to make a stand with the dark side.

Then he closed it, and sat back on his knees. A look of more controlled resolve came to him. It looked like a greater level of control – Kanan noticed, more than a little guiltily – than Ezra had ever achieved before in their training together. Kanan didn’t want to think it was due to Ezra’s new choice of friends, but more the maturity he had come to expect from him.

Ezra glanced away towards the door. Two armed guards stood watch.

“It’s okay,” said Ezra, waving them off. “We’ll be fine.”

The guards nodded, and left, leaving the cell door open behind them. Kanan did his best not to look like he was eying it as Ezra sighed and sat down cross-legged in front of him, his hands on his knees.

“They wanted to just have you executed,” he mumbled, looking down.

“I guess you’re who I have to thank for still being alive?”

“You really think I’d let them?” Ezra glanced up, genuinely hurt. Kanan didn’t like how that look on his face still managed to strike him so deeply. “I’d never let anyone hurt you.”

“But you’d let them do this?” Kanan pressed on his restraints.

“Would you have listened to me otherwise?”

“Did you ever consider asking?”

Ezra dropped his eyes in guilt. His hands tightened where they rested on his knees. He rubbed one of them down over his pantleg.

“I told them I could get you to listen to reason…”

“Reason?” Kanan almost burst out laughing. “You really thought reason was going to work? What about any of this has been reasonable?”

“Kanan, listen to me!” Ezra leaned forward, gesturing emphatically as he spoke. He held his arms open. Unthreatening. Only an earnest desperation in the way he looked at him. “Just listen…it’s not what you think.”

“Then what is it?”

“The Sith…the Imperials…I haven’t _joined_ them. You know I’d never do that. I’m still with you. With the others. This is just—”

“Just what? Temporary?” Kanan lifted his head to glare, even if it did lance pain through his shoulders. “An infiltration? You ally with them now and abandon them later once they aren’t useful anymore?”

Ezra stared.

He spoke, very quietly: “Is that so hard to believe?”

“I believe you didn’t bother to explain any of this to us beforehand.”

“I didn’t think you’d agree to it.”

“We’ve let you do infiltration jobs before. At the Academy?”

“Yes, and Hera said you were a nervous wreck about it the entire time. And this time, there would be Sith.”

Kanan clenched his teeth together hard. It was true. He wouldn’t have approved of an operation like this any more than he approved of it now. But that wasn’t the point.

“You still should have told us,” he grumbled.

Ezra smiled, at last a degree of tension easing between them. It felt more like it should be.

“I knew everyone would be good enough to escape,” he said. “And when you let yourself get caught, I figured…we’d finally have a chance to talk.”

“Right. So we’re talking.” Kanan tugged on his restraints. “Now let me out so we can get out of here.”

And there, the easiness faded. Ezra’s smile vanished. He lowered his eyes and looked to one side, pursing his lips. Kanan knew what that look meant.

“You’re not letting me out, are you?”

“I can’t.” Ezra winced. “Not yet. I just need a little more time, Kanan. I’m so close. If I can just get what I need out of them, then—”

“What you’re doing is dangerous, Ezra. Please.” Kanan sought his gaze this time. Looked for him. Reaching out. He wanted to reach to him more, feel their connection through the Force, but the collar burned warm against his skin, blocking him. “Don’t go on with this.”

And there it was. That confidence. That certainty aimed back at him.

“I can handle this, Kanan,” he said, tipping up his chin. “Just trust me.”

“It’s not you I don’t trust.”

“Is it the Sith? You know, Kanan…” Ezra pulled his legs in closer to himself. He sat more at ease, more…grown up…than Kanan could ever recall seeing. “The dark side…it isn’t so bad.”

Kanan shut his eyes immediately and shook his head. He wouldn’t listen to this.

“Don’t—! Don’t even _start_ to think like that, Ezra. That’s exactly how the dark side gets to you.”

“And you know from experience, right?”

“No, I don’t. But I know enough.”

“Why? Why do you automatically shut it out? Isn’t it worth the risk? If there’s something – anything – that can give us an advantage in this fight, isn’t it worth at least considering?”

“Some things aren’t worth the risk, Ezra. That’s one of them.”

“But I’ve learned so much already. About the Force. About myself…”

Kanan wasn’t expecting a brush against his cheek. The touch sent a jolt through him – he blamed it on an overly tired body and overstressed nerves – followed by a warmth as Ezra laid his hand against him.

Kanan didn’t want to look up. He _shouldn’t_ look up. But he did, just enough to catch the softness in Ezra’s eyes of another look on him he’d never seen before.

He didn’t want to name it, but it made him suddenly very…uncomfortable. Exposed. Aware of his defenselessness. Even the bob of his throat against the collar as he swallowed felt vulnerable.

He turned his eyes away and down to the side, as much of an escape as he could manage. But he could still feel Ezra’s eyes on him, burning his skin.

“Kanan,” said Ezra, very softly. “You don’t know what it’s like…”

“I don’t wanna know,” Kanan ground between his teeth.

“I wish you did. It’s…amazing. The emotion. You don’t hold anything back. You realize there’s so much more to making connections than just getting a wild lothcat to let you pet it. The Sith have shown me things…”

His fingers slid over Kanan’s skin, down his cheek and neck. They pushed back into his hair, loosening it from its tie. Ezra hooked one finger beneath the Force collar and pulled, just a little.

“It’s not just about discipline and focus. There’s power in passion, too.”

All the while Ezra looked him over with a new wonder that Kanan didn’t want to see.

He shut his eyes, steeling himself against the swoop in his belly.

“There’s an alternative, you know,” Ezra whispered, far too close to him. Kanan shuddered. “I could let you go, and you could come with me? We could go talk to the Sith together. I could tell them I was able to reach you. We could fool them. Then, when the time’s right, we confront them together…”

Lips brushed his ear. Loose hair tickled along his jaw and the edge of his neck. Ezra’s pull on the collar made him lean forward onto his knees. Made everything pull tight. Kanan tried to shut it out. Tried to focus. He even recited the Jedi code to himself – what he could remember of it – but no amount of preparation or mental defenses could have stopped what happened next. When Ezra whispered a single word in his ear, full of knowing, full of deliberate intent, and full of absolutely filthy implication.

“Master.”

“Ezra!”

Kanan jerked, reeling away as much as he could. Ezra pulled back, withdrawing his hand, though the bend in his posture was not one of regret. At least, not for what he’d done. Only…disappointment.

“Ezra,” Kanan said again, repeating his name. Focusing on it. Ignoring how he had to force his voice steady. “Stop this. Right now. Let me go, and we’ll get out of here. Both of us.”

“I’m sorry, Kanan,” Ezra said, properly crestfallen. “I can’t. Not yet.”

“Ezra—”

“It’ll be alright. I promise.”

He stood, and backed away. Kanan looked after him, wanting to reach out, or call, already half knowing it would be useless.

Maybe if it weren’t for the collar…maybe then he could reach him…

Ezra turned, and made for the door. He paused on the steps to the cell, looking back only once.

Hopeful. Always so hopeful. Tinged with only a little regret

“I’ll be back for you,” he said, then ducked his head and walked out.

The door slid shut and sealed behind him.

Kanan sagged against his restraints, letting himself go limp. He hung his head, only then allowing himself to breathe.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks Ballista, for the motivation.

_“Kanan, why won’t you just listen? I thought you’d do anything to help people!”_

_“I would do – almost! – anything! I’ve already done a lot, but I won’t do this!”_

_“Why? Don’t we need all the help we can get?”_

_“At what price, Ezra? How we fight is just as important as why we fight. Some things aren’t worth the price you pay.”_

_“Is there any price too high for beating the Empire? For finally granting people their freedom? You saw what they did to Geonosis!”_

_Yes_ , Kanan thought as he waited there in his cell, his head hanging low. Waiting. Waiting for more guards to come or interrogation droids or Inquisitors or anything that would alleviate the dark and the quiet. Waiting for something else to focus on so there would be more to do than just wait and think.

Think, and remember.

_Yes, some prices are too high, Ezra._

It was a fight they’d had shortly before Ezra had left. Kanan would be fooling himself if he thought that hadn’t been a major part of his decision. His refusal to agree.

Kanan turned the words over and over in his mind. What he’d said. What Ezra had said. He remembered them so clearly, and now he doubted them. Rethought them. Wondered what else he could have said to make Ezra see reason. He wouldn’t budge on his own stance, but there had to have been something – some other phrasing he could have used. Something that wouldn’t have driven him away.

He could still remember the look on Ezra’s face. The way he’d looked up to him, eyes and expression and the whole of his posture begging, _pleading_ for Kanan to understand.

And Kanan could. He did understand. That was the most difficult part.

The dark side was powerful, but it wasn’t worth the sacrifice. Maybe it could help them, maybe not. Very little was guaranteed when the Force was involved.

Somehow Kanan hadn’t managed to drive that into Ezra’s head in all their training together. He hadn’t thought he’d overlooked it, but…he must have missed something…saying the right thing…

They hadn’t parted in anger. Only disappointment. Frustration. Ezra wanted to help. He wanted to do everything he could to protect people without having to be protected himself. He only wanted to do good. He wanted it so badly.

He wanted it bad enough to abandon the Ghost – to abandon them – and follow a Sith down a very dark path. Ezra’s passion and desire to do good were exactly the sort of motivations the dark side would exploit. A Sith would promise to teach Ezra everything he wanted to know. Everything Kanan couldn’t.

Kanan sighed. Dwelling on the past and his mistakes like this was exactly what they taught against back at the temple. Not a very Jedi thing to do. He should be focusing on now. On the present. How to deal with the situation as it was, rather than stew over how it could have been.

But it wasn’t that easy. Not when one was thoroughly and completely attached.

_Jedi don’t form attachments,_ he thought bitterly, reminding himself of the lectures at the Temple. _You have to remain objective. You have to think clearly. You can’t place the well-being of one person over several._

He’d tossed that idea out with the rest of the garbage a long time ago. He liked to think he would have even if he’d never met Hera.

It turned out Jedi didn’t know everything after all…

It was a long wait in the dark before Kanan had visitors again. He tried to meditate, but the Force collar burned against his skin, searing him with a pain that wasn’t quite physical when he tried to reach out. Tried to extend his senses. If he tried to push against it, the burn only went deeper.

Eventually he gave up, and dozed a little instead – quick, restless snatches of sleep – to keep up what strength he could. He had a feeling he would need it.

Finally, the sound of boots marching in formation sounded from down the hall, moving steadily closer.

The door to his cell slid open.

Kanan squinted against the flood of light, glaring as his eyes adjusted.

Ezra stepped into the cell. Alone.

Kanan braced himself, ready for another argument.

But all it took was one glimpse of Ezra’s eyes to make his resolve falter. They looked the same as always, their deep, resonant blue catching the faint red and white lights of the cell. They had a look of apprehension to them – a moment’s hesitation – before they too resolved. Looked back at Kanan with a reluctant acceptance.

“This is your last chance,” he said, in a low and careful voice, “to change your mind.”

“You know I won’t,” Kanan answered.

And there it was. Frustration. Quick to flare. Ezra’s hands clenched at his sides and Kanan saw the way he tightened his jaw. Trying so hard not to pout.

“Why won’t you just _listen?_ ” he all but seethed.

“I am listening,” said Kanan with calm. “And I know what I’m hearing. It’s the same story I’ve always heard. Someone thinks they can use the dark side to get what they want, and it ends up getting them.”

Kanan enjoyed maybe a little too much the way Ezra puffed up with offense. Pride turning into vanity.

“You’re not the first person who’s tried this.”

“Kanan…” Ezra breathed, grasping desperately for patience. “All I want…is…”

“What?”

“Is…I want…I want _you!_ ” A spark of awkwardness struck again. The same as it had the first time Ezra said those words to him, with the same emphasis. He was just as quick to recover now as he was then. “…I want you with me on this.”

“Then the dark side’s already failing you, because you won’t get it.” Kanan pulled on his restraints, making the energy bindings flare in resistance. The better to drive home his point as he locked eyes with his former padawan. “The dark side isn’t getting you what you want. In fact, I’m going to do everything I can to stop you.”

For all their sakes, but mostly for Ezra’s. Kanan wasn’t sure how much heartbreak showed through on his face – he hoped none, if his aim was to convince Ezra of his own folly – but it was plain on Ezra’s. Pain. Disappointment. Regret. It hurt for Kanan to see it as much as it did for Ezra to feel it. Neither of them wanted this. They didn’t want to hurt each other.

So why were they here?

Ezra opened his mouth to speak again, to try and force words through the threat of tears in his eyes, but the sound of booted feet coming down the steps into the cell stopped him.

A squad of stormtroopers, armed, filled the cell. Two more stood outside the door.

“Your time is up,” one of them said to Ezra through the helmet’s modulation. The colored shoulderpad marked him as the squad leader.

He turned away from any sputtering protest Ezra offered to focus empty black eyes down on Kanan.

“Lord Raizorr demands your presence.”

“Sorry,” said Kanan, offering half a smile. “I’m a little tied up right now.”

The troopers looked at each other, then back at him. The squad leader lifted his blaster rifle and slammed the butt of it into the side of Kanan’s head. The world spun as they unlocked his restraints – maybe Ezra said something about going easy on him…he wasn’t sure – and Kanan felt himself lifted, his hands resecured behind his back. Still numb to feeling, his legs refused to cooperate as the troopers stood him up.

He shook his head and squinted enough to make out Ezra through the haze, who had moved back and out of the way. Their eyes met for a moment, then Ezra turned his away first, saying nothing as Kanan was was half-dragged, half marched out of the cell.

They went down a series of corridors, through multiple intersections, and out towards the front of the Imperial compound. A trooper stayed on either side of Kanan, holding him up by his arms until his legs regained enough feeling to work on their own.

Ezra walked behind the squad, quietly keeping pace.

Outside the compound, it was dark. Dark overhead. Dark down below. Dark all around. Only the flood lights set up around the Imperial camp and the red glow of the Sith temple built into the wall of the massive cave illuminated the cavern. Giant deposits of minerals hung from the ceiling like the teeth of a monster, ready to bite down and devour them all.

Kanan felt briefly glad for the collar if it meant he didn’t have to feel the darkness radiating from the temple across the jagged floor. A deep ravine separated the Imperial complex from the ancient structure, but it was still too close for comfort.

The troopers marched him down the front steps to the ground level outside. Cut off from the Force, Kanan could still feel the dread in the air. Like a change in pressure. A tension and skittishness in the soldiers. They had to be terrified. Who knew what sort of things that Sith temple did to untrained minds? Kanan almost felt sorry for them.

Almost.

“Whatever they pay you guys for these jobs,” Kanan muttered, tasting the sour air in his mouth. “It’s not enough.”

“Don’t talk, Jedi.” The squad captain shoved his shoulder. “Keep moving.”

Kanan stayed where he was. He was still sore, his joints and muscles screaming from having been bound so long. The time it had taken to walk through the complex had brought feeling back in his limbs so he could at least stand on his own.

That was good. He had an idea for what to do next.

“Sorry. I don’t feel like bowing and scraping to any Sith today.”

Kanan leaped, and swung his arms down below his feet, bringing his manacled hands up in front of him. He spun and slammed the heavy bands around his wrists into the squad captain’s helmet, then another one standing close beside him. The sound of durasteel rang on useless armor and they went down. The rest of the squad sprang to life, shouting orders and raising their blasters.

Kanan turned and ran.

He had no idea where he would go. Even the Ghost had trouble getting here without massive sensor scans and navigation readouts. But Kanan would take his chances with the unknown over staying put.

Once he was away, he could plan. He could come up with a way to deal with the Sith. To deal with Ezra.

That last thought tugged at his conscience, but he pushed it aside. He couldn’t afford guilt now.

In all reality, he should have been more worried about how he – a half-trained Jedi – was going to deal with a Sith Lord all by himself.

Somehow Ezra still seemed the more important issue.

Kanan ran, ducking low around parked equipment, dodging this way and that to avoid the hail of blaster bolts that rained around him. Troopers stationed around the camp saw his escape and charged. He jumped, spun, kicked, and bashed helmets with his manacles as he fought his way through, using the troopers themselves for shields when he had to.

He didn’t need the Force to deal with a few bucketheads.

Kanan looked ahead. He spotted a couple of speeders hovering parked near the edge of the ravine.

He made a bolt for them and was almost there when, suddenly, he hit a wall.

It wasn’t an actual wall. There was no wall there. But there may as well have been. The Force solidified in front of him and he slammed into it. Rather than let him fall, it closed around him and held him rooted in place, pressing in, making it difficult to even breathe as he glared ahead, unable to turn and see his attacker.

The grip that held him also apparently felt the need to lift him up and slam him down onto the ground for good measure, knocking the rest of any resistance out of him.

Kanan grunted low in his chest, unable to even move his hands to try and push himself up, as a tall figure sauntered close to the edge of his vision. Its shadow fell over him, blocking the light.

It was the Sith Lord he had seen before. The one who had stood by Ezra and led him away.

“Great,” Kanan groaned.

The Sith laughed. A deep, rumbling sound that was more like a growl.

“I’m curious.” The voice that purred was velvety smooth, concealing the dark power that stalked beneath it. “Where exactly did you think you would go, Jedi? These tunnels are an underground maze of dead-ends and drop-offs. You would never find your way out.”

“I tend to surprise people,” Kanan grunted, catching his breath in sharp gasps between his teeth.

A massive grey-furred hand tipped in black claws reached down, hauling him up by the collar of his tunic like he weighed nothing. The Force’s grip on him eased, enough that Kanan could lift his head and find himself face to face with Darth Raizorr.

Hot breath blasted his face, smelling of meat and old blood. Kanan coughed and turned his head away to breathe different air as the Togorian drew its lips back in a wide, fang-filled grin.

“I’m tempted to let you try,” the Sith rumbled, squeezing his hand tight around Kanan’s neck. “It would be amusing. I’d let you loose in these caves and let you run, then hunt you down like the prey animal you are.”

“Take off this collar and we’ll see who’s prey.” Kanan met the Sith’s eyes with all the defiance he could muster.

Raizorr laughed, blasting Kanan’s face with foul breath again.

“That would be entertaining. Unfortunately, I have more pressing concerns at the moment.”

Raizorr dropped him. Kanan stumbled, half down to one knee before he got his balance. Stormtroopers moved in to take hold of him, grabbing his shoulders and arms. The same squad leader as before bashed the side of Kanan’s head with his gun – payback, he supposed – and they fell into formation around him, blasters ready.

Raizorr turned his attention back to the front steps of the Imperial compound.

“I assume that your attempts to sway his loyalty have failed?” he purred.

Ezra moved forward, easing through the ranks of stormtroopers that surrounded them. He had stood back and out of the way for Kanan’s escape attempt, doing nothing to help…but doing nothing to hinder him, either.

Kanan tried to catch his eyes as he drew near, but Ezra’s attention lay solely on Raizorr as he moved close to his side, standing as tall and resigned as he could. (Even so, he only reached as high as Raizorr’s elbow.) There was a focus and discipline in his bearing that Kanan didn’t think he’d ever seen in their practice sessions together.

Maybe the roll in his gut that he felt was just professional jealousy.

“No, my lord,” he said. Kanan pretended it didn’t sting. “He’s…always been stubborn that way.”

Raizorr made a snorting sound through his whiskers. His tail swayed side to side behind him in time with his thoughts.

“Well, no matter,” he purred, and turned away, gesturing for the stormtroopers to fall into line. “Were there more time we could focus our efforts together. For now, we will move on.”

He led the squad of troopers across the dusty ground, towards the ravine that divided the massive cavern in half. The lights from both the Imperial compound and the Sith temple grew dim and far away, casting the area in even deeper shadows. The focus of so much darkness culminated into a black that seemed – and felt – like a tangible presence just beyond the edge of the ravine. As they drew close enough to look into it, Kanan felt certain that a person would die, not from falling, but drowning, should they step over the edge.

Kanan thought they were headed for the speeders that the Imperials had been using to carry themselves and supplies across to the other side of the ravine…and to bring back anything excavated from the temple ruins. But that wasn’t where they were headed.

“Tell me, apprentice,” Raizorr purred as they went along, speaking to Ezra at his side. “What does one do with useless dead weight?”

“You get rid of it,” Ezra answered automatically. “It will slow you down otherwise. Hold you back. Keep you from being the best that you—what are you doing?”

At Raizorr’s gesture, the troopers marched Kanan to the edge of the ravine. They turned to put his back to it, then shoved him down to his knees once more, careful to keep their hands on his shoulders and their blasters ready. Kanan could feel the heat of the charged tips near his face.

“Getting rid of useless weight,” said Raizorr, ignoring the way Ezra’s eyes grew large and shot up to him.

“But—!”

Raizorr reached down, unclipping the lightsaber that hung from his belt. A violent snap-hiss of sound cut the air, silencing Ezra as he ignited the blade. The red of its glow cast a deep crimson color across their faces, tainting the white of the stormtrooper armor.

“Is there a problem?” Raizorr pulled back his lips to show his teeth. The red light of the blade glinted over their sharp tips.

Ezra looked between him and Kanan, a rising tension in his stance.

He didn’t say anything, his throat clamped down tight.

“Of course. How foolish of me,” said Raizorr. He flipped the lightsaber in his hand to hold out towards Ezra, handle first. “You want to do the honors yourself.”

Ezra stared at him. For the space of a few heartbeats, he didn’t breathe.

When he finally managed to speak, it was a low, shaken: “…what?”

Raizorr’s grin curled in malicious delight.

“You came here to learn power, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah. But—”

“You want to be stronger?”

“…yes…”

“Then you must do this. It is an ancient Sith tradition. The slaying of your old master signifies your succession of him.”

Raizorr stepped in close, dwarfing Ezra in his shadow. Kanan surged up to his feet in an instinctive impulse to go to him, but the stormtroopers held him down.

“When you came to me,” growled Raizorr. “You claimed you wanted knowledge. Power. You wanted to know how to become stronger in order to impose your will on the galaxy. You were steeped in frustration. Fueled by selfish desire. Everything a proper Sith should be.”

Raizorr turned to leer back at Kanan as Ezra cowered under his presence. His slitted eyes narrowed and his ears lay flat along his skull. In the red light, he looked demonic.

“Were you not the one who said that this Jedi had nothing left to teach you? That he himself admitted your abilities had set a pace to which he could not keep?” Raizorr eased his posture, leaning back away from Ezra, allowing him room to breathe. “He has outlived his usefulness to you.”

He pushed the lightsaber out with a greater insistance, holding it crosswise within Ezra’s reach.

“I can sense your connection to this Jedi, apprentice. That is what is holding you back. Sever it, and you will no longer be constrained by it.”

“Ezra—” Kanan tried to say before the squad leader hit him again.

Raizorr just grinned, locking Ezra in his gaze.

“The Force shall set you free,” he purred. “Kill him.”

Ezra hesitated a moment or two longer. Then, slowly, his hand rose, and reached out to take careful hold of the lightsaber. It felt heavy when Raizorr dropped it into his hand, weighed down with the severity of its meaning.

Raizorr watched, satisfaction gleaming in his eyes, as Ezra bowed his head, and took the lightsaber from his own belt.

“Yes, master,” he murmured, eyes hidden beneath the fall of his hair as he ignited it.

Raizorr looked on as Ezra stepped around him and moved forward, parting the stormtroopers like water. They were quick to get out of his way.

Ezra kept both sabers lowered at his sides until he stood before Kanan.

As he lifted his head, the shadow over his eyes was dark, underlit by the glow of red and blue as he raised the blades and crossed them over Kanan’s throat.

Kanan didn’t say anything, though he tipped up his chin, just enough to avoid the humming light. He met Ezra’s eyes with a hard look, unflinching, and continued defiance.

Though Kanan would have been lying to himself if he didn’t try one last time to reach him. Not just with the Force. He searched his eyes, imploring, oblivious of the gut-punched nausea in his stomach, to see if there was anything still there of that fourteen year old lothrat he’d met on the streets of Capital City.

Kanan didn’t know what he saw there looking back at him. It wasn’t the look of one dead, but…it wasn’t Ezra, either.

The collar burned hot against his skin.

For a long moment, nothing moved. An oppressive silence filled the cave, making the distant sound of wind and the reverberations of machinery – even the hum of the two lightsabers – seem muted and far away. 

Then Ezra breathed, shuddering, and whispered a single word:

“…no…”

He lunged forward, aiming the lightsabers in a scissor-like motion to slice through the shackles holding Kanan’s wrists bound together in front of him.

Kanan didn’t think. He jumped to his feet, catching Ezra’s lightsaber as it was tossed to him. Both elbows and a fist slammed into the weak neck armor of the stormtroopers nearest, then he and Ezra stood back to back, ready to fend off the first volley of blasterfire as the troopers started shooting.


	3. Chapter 3

Kanan had been imprisoned for…well, a long time. Days, at least. His stomach was empty and his arms were unsteady and the collar around his neck still blocked that sense of the Force that would have otherwise been all around him.

So he didn’t blame himself too hard when he wasn’t up to his usual standards in a fight.

Blasterfire erupted all around. Kanan ducked and dodged what he could, even deflected a few back. He also took two hits to the chest and where his shoulder armor would have been if the Imperials hadn’t confiscated it.

He dropped to one knee, gritting his teeth and bracing against the pain. What troopers were left rushed in and would have been upon him if Ezra hadn’t suddenly thrown out his hand, sending them back and tumbling over the edge of the ravine with one massive pulse of Force power.

There was no hesitation.

Kanan could hear the troopers scream for a long way down.

As he knelt, Ezra protecting his back from what troopers remained, Kanan reached up and tugged at the collar around his neck. The metal brace was loose enough he could just get his fingers beneath the lining, but the collar wouldn’t budge. It was sealed securely with an electronic lock. A slice from a lightsaber would probably do it, but without the Force to guide his aim Kanan was less than sure about his ability to cut the collar off without decapitating himself.

Besides, there were bigger things to worry about.

He didn’t need the Force to know Darth Raizorr was coming. And he was angry.

The Sith’s roar filled the cavern, disturbing a flock of mynocks in one of the caves that branched off to the right. Disturbing the very dust from the mineral deposits in their formations all around. Kanan could feel the sound vibrate the air in his lungs. All the way into his bones.

He turned just in time to see the Sith leap, teeth and claws outstretched in the absence of any lightsaber – and unafraid for it – and land on Ezra exactly the way a cat might with its prey.

Or, he would have, if Ezra had still been there.

Ezra threw himself to one side, rolling up to his feet to turn and ready his stance, Raizorr’s red lightsaber held out in front of him. Kanan didn’t like the look in his eyes – more than just the reflection of a red glow – though there wasn’t much he could do except call Ezra’s name and deal with the few remaining stormtroopers who tried to rush him.

“Ezra!” He bashed the blunt end of the lightsaber into the squad leader’s helmet. Then kneed him in the gut.

The trooper went down.

Ezra wasn’t looking at him. He focused all his attention on Raizorr, who bristled and towered over him like some primeval predator, radiating dark power.

“You think you know power, boy?” the Sith snarled, flexing his claws. “You haven’t even _begun_ to scrape the surface!”

“I know enough,” Ezra snapped, and charged. Kanan could have told him it was a bad move. Against any other enemy – stormtroopers, droids, scoundrels armed with blasters – it might have worked. A charge and sudden leap and spin too fast to see, lightsaber acting simultaneously as sword and shield.

But not on a Sith.

Raizorr held out one hand and caught him in mid-air, a wrenching gesture as if grabbing Ezra by the throat. Ezra froze, gasped, kicked at nothing. He held onto the lightsaber with one hand but grasped at his throat with the other, suddenly straining for breath.

Kanan shut off the lightsaber on Ezra’s blade and switched it to blaster power, firing a volley of quick shots at Raizorr’s turned back.

Raizorr held up his free hand and caught them in his palm, harmlessly absorbing the crackling blue energy. He didn’t even look Kanan’s direction as he closed his hand into a fist, snuffing out the light.

“A sad state for Jedi these days,” he rumbled.

Kanan switched the weapon back to its blade and charged.

It was at least enough to distract Raizorr into letting Ezra go.

Ezra dropped to the ground, coughing and bent forward on his hands and knees as Raizorr called his lightsaber back to him and turned to meet Kanan. Their blades clashed, a sparkling crackle of blue and red energy lighting up the cavern.

Kanan knew fully well what he was doing. Even with the Force and fully rested and unhurt his chances were at best mediocre when it came to battling a fully trained Sith Lord. But he didn’t stop long enough to think. He acted. Blocking and parrying and counterattacking as best as he could.

Raizorr was like a windstorm: battering against him ceaselessly, each blow harder than the last. Never letting up. Never allowing an opening. The mad glint in his eyes was one of violent glee as he bared his teeth, laughing and roaring with every breath and reminding Kanan of the awful smell of it.

He was having fun.

Kanan did the best he could, but it was really only a matter of time.

He tried to think back. Tried to remember what it was like when he fought the Inquisitor. The surge of purpose and freedom that he’d felt after thinking Ezra had been killed. It had been the light side, for certain, taking away his fear of loss and grief and pain under a calm cloak of acceptance. Empowering him. Making him realize what he could do. Kanan could remember it – what it felt like – but the Force wasn’t there. He couldn’t reach it.

 _Stay in the moment,_ his own training nagged at him, snapping him back to the present.

He didn’t know if it would have made much of a difference.

Raizorr twisted their lightsabers into a tight lock, trapping Kanan close with his arm bent. There was almost no space between them.

Kanan could see his reflection in the gleam of saliva over Raizorr’s teeth.

Raizorr growled: “I wonder what Jedi taste like.”

Kanan reeled, pulling away from that mad glint in his eyes, but it wasn’t quick enough. Raizorr lunged forward. His jaws opened wide. He sank his teeth down into the soft unprotected flesh of Kanan’s shoulder.

Kanan didn’t know if he screamed. He probably did. But he couldn’t hear it over Ezra’s.

“Kanan, _no!”_

Kanan dropped the lightsaber, both his hands going up as Raizorr bore him down onto one knee. He caught the Sith at the chest and shoulder enough to keep from being crushed entirely, and gasped for breath, fire lancing down his side.

He didn’t notice the lightsaber flying away from him, pulled into Ezra’s hand. He only knew the surprised look that suddenly registered on Raizorr’s face, the sound of his stalled grunt, as Raizorr abruptly released him.

He pulled back, a new blue light illuminating from the blade that protruded through his chest.

He let Kanan go. Kanan slumped to his knees, just…breathing…and holding his arm.

Ezra leaped off of Raizorr’s back and tore the lightsaber out with him. The Sith roared, lurching to face him, somehow still able to stand. He flexes his claws with pointed menace.

All around them, stormtroopers lay dead or unconscious. Those that hadn’t fled back to the compound. Reinforcements would be arriving soon.

Kanan flinched at the thought. Though, if that crackling power gathering at Raizorr’s clawtips was what he thought it was, they wouldn’t be around long enough to see it.

“Ezra…!” he cried, coughing. “Run!”

Ezra didn’t run. He faced Raizorr with his own lightsaber held in front of him, gripped in both hands, the look in his eyes one that could cut durasteel.

“Half-starved whelp,” Raizorr snarled, coalescing a dark power into his claws. His eyes were livid. “If you don’t have the strength to do what’s neccesary then you’re no use to anyone, let alone the dark side!”

He threw out his hand. Lightning – or what looked like lightning…dark, jagged arcs of solidified Force power – lashed out. Kanan felt his heart still and his blood go cold as the energy struck the blade of Ezra’s lightsaber full on, crackling and sparking loud enough to drown an ion engine. The sheer force of it slid Ezra back, but he kept his feet, teeth gritted and growling as he leaned into the attack…

…and then reflected it back at Raizorr, striking him full on in the chest. Kanan heard his roar and smelled singed fur and burning flesh as Raizorr staggered. Dropped down to one knee.

And Ezra didn’t stop there.

His scream had been building, drowned at first by the crackle of power. Growing and growing with a light in his eyes as sharp and focused as starlight. What Kanan saw there…it wasn’t fear, or pain, or grief, but…

It was rage: raw, atavistic fury of the kind only frustration heaped upon loss and abuse and a will to push through it – not only push, but lift, and hurl it back at one’s oppressors – could produce. Kanan had never seen anything like it.

Even in the Sith Lords he’d faced before; they had an air of control about them. Being in their presence was like being smothered, like drowning in cold, unable to breathe. But he had at least been able to move.

This…this was something else.

This was being in the presence of something cosmic.

Kanan didn’t want to think it was the whole of the Force itself – that…that was too big a thing to contemplate – but there was little else his mind could scramble together to cope with just how much power Ezra channeled through himself to slam into Raizorr’s already crippled body. (Words like _weak_ and _corporeal_ drifted somewhere in Kanan’s thoughts…and he was glad for the collar after all, blocking his senses from being exposed too close to a star. He didn’t think his sense would have survived it.)

Ezra tore back the fabric of the universe, and hurled at – into, through – Raizorr whatever black substance lay beneath.

Raizorr’s body rolled to a stop near the edge of the ravine: burnt, scorched, trailing smoke. Great patches of fur had been burned away, and Kanan didn’t know how he could still lift his head. Yellow eyes narrowed through a twisted visage permanently scarred into a snarl. His breath came in wheezes, rattling through liquid.

Ezra, deathly calm, a black nimbus around him like a gravity well, moved close enough to stand over him. Looking down.

Kanan didn’t breathe as he watched.

“Do you know why you Sith keep failing?” said Ezra, pointing the tip of his lightsaber between Raizorr’s eyes. His voice sounded…strange…in the warped light.

And his eyes.

The look in his eyes...

The Sith snorted, blood flecking from his nose. He glared back up, but didn’t speak. Kanan wasn’t sure he still could.

Ezra smirked. Just a little.

“It’s because your way of recruiting apprentices is to piss them off.”

He didn’t behead him. Somehow, Kanan knew Ezra thought that was too good a death. Too quick. Too painless. Instead Ezra held his lightsaber out to one side and raised his hand. Raizorr’s breath caught. His eyes bulged. His claws scrabbled for useless purchase against the dusty ground as he was suddenly lifted. Kanan sagged back on his knees, a sickened nausea in his stomach at the sound of snapping bones and wrenching muscle as Raizorr contorted in impossible ways. Blood vessels strained in his eyes and threatened to burst.

Kanan had to look away, clenching his eyes shut.

It didn’t stop him from hearing the sound as Ezra ripped the Sith in half from the inside out.

Then it was over.

Quiet fell over the cave.

When sound returned, it did so gradually…tentative, like it tested the wisdom of coming back at all. Kanan heard the distant hum of machinery first, filling the lower registers, and then the sound of his own breathing once he allowed it again. Higher. Scraping over the surface.

The rest of it – the stormtroopers around him, what was left of Raizorr smeared upon the rocks, the Sith temple sitting still across the ravine, a silent spectator – felt dead.

Kanan closed his eyes tight, sobbing a few staggered breaths.

Even if they were enemies…even if they would have done the same to them…it shouldn’t have come to this. The Force collar prevented him from feeling just how tangible so much death and hate was around him, how thick it lay, but he didn’t have to feel it.

In his heart, he knew the wrong of it all.

Ezra’s footsteps crunched behind him. Kanan felt a hand on his shoulder – his good shoulder – and a gentle squeeze.

He almost jerked away.

“Kanan.” Ezra, his voice soft again, like nothing at all had changed. As if nothing out of the orindary had happened. “We should go.”

Kanan didn’t say anything. He let Ezra help him up, his good arm numbly falling into place around his shoulders. Standing on feet that felt heavy and useless. Kanan’s head swam. Heat rolled up and over his skin. He leaned on Ezra for support, holding his shredded arm close to his chest, but he wouldn’t look at him. His eyes remained down. Turned away.

“We can get to the temple from here,” Ezra was saying, only half heard. He tugged Kanan towards the speeder parked along the ravine. “Once we’re in, the Empire won’t be able to follow us. We can grab whatever holocrons or crystals are inside and—”

“No.” Kanan shook his head. Tired. He was so tired. He looked aside to him at last, searching for his eyes, and he didn’t know what Ezra saw there that made him look so shocked, but it worked. “Ezra…let’s go. Please. Let’s just go.”

Ezra looked like he was going to protest. Then he closed his mouth. He nodded, and took a breath, bracing himself to help Kanan limp the rest of the way to the speeder.

They climbed in, Kanan slumping with a wince into the passenger side, and took off.

They sped away through the tunnels of the cave just as the second wave of stormtroopers caught up with them, shooting uselessly into the dark.

*****

They stole an Imperial shuttle, which carried them further and faster than a speeder would have, finally breaking the atmosphere of Malachor and reaching the safety of hyperspace.

Not that it was easy.

Kanan fought continually against the urge to pass out. It was only Ezra helping him along that kept him upright, up the shuttle’s ramp and into the cockpit.

Every step jostled and jarred his arm and shoulder, even as he tried to keep it tucked in close to his chest. Pain lanced down his side as the adrenaline of battle wore off, and Kanan realized just how badly he was wounded.

He still reached for the pilot’s seat once they were inside, grabbing the back of the chair to pull himself into it.

“No. No. No you don’t,” Ezra grunted, trying to keep hold. “You aren’t in any shape to—”

“Unless the Sith taught you that too, I’m still the better pilot.” Kanan grit his teeth and adjusted the controls, putting his wounded arm to use. “Strap in.”

It was a shaky take-off. An unsteady ascent. The shuttle groaned and vibrated as it lurched upward through the atmosphere. Kanan leaned forward hard onto the controls, squinting and blinking and shaking his head to clear his vision from the black that wanted to creep in along the edges.

Ezra could barely sit still, squeezing the arms of his chair.

Several times, he reached over to wrench the controls away.

“Nope,” said Kanan, smacking his hands.

“But you’re hurt!”

“And I’ve seen the way you fly! Sit down.”

The shuttle lurched – finally – and stars melted away into long streaks of white and blue around them. The shaking of the shuttle eased, fell away to be replaced by a smooth, easy background hum. Kanan sagged back in the pilot’s seat, letting out a long breath.

“Where are we going?” Ezra asked, his voice quiet.

“I set the coordinates for Gorel,” said Kanan, closing his eyes. He let his head tip back against the seat to rest. “We can dump the shuttle there in case the Imperials tracked us…don’t wanna lead them back to base…contact the others from there…for a pick-up…”

Finally settled, and calm, the darkness closed in.

“No, no, no, no, no…!” Ezra lunged across the control panel to slap the command that would put the shuttle on autopilot before they drifted too far out of the hyperspace lane.

Then he caught Kanan in his arms before he fell out of his seat.

“Karabast!”


	4. Chapter 4

Kanan didn’t know where he was, or…when he was, or how he’d gotten there. He knew he felt…light, with a pleasant calm in his body and a peace in his heart that he hadn’t known for a long time.

It was nice.

He turned in the dark: dark, because he didn’t know how else to think of it. He couldn’t see or…sense…anything around him. He thought he heard the distant sound of someone calling his name. He tried to turn his head, focus on the sound, hone in on its direction so he could follow it to its source. But it came from everywhere. Its echo bounced off of nothing.

Maybe it came from his own thoughts…

Then another sound: sniffling.

Kanan turned, and could just make out the first feature that distinguished anything from anything else in this place.

It was a child. A boy, he thought. Not Ezra, but maybe someone around the same age. Human and hunched over with their back towards him, bent forward with a dirty brown blanket pulled in around their shoulders.

No.

Not a blanket.

Long robes.

As Kanan eased closer, he could see the stains of dirt along the edge of the cloth, its tattered hem and ragged holes only part of the blackness that marred its surface. The rest were scorch marks. Blaster shots.

The boy sniffled, whimpered. Dragged an arm across his face.

“Hey,” Kanan said, approaching slowly. Carefully. He didn’t want to startle him. “Hey, it’s okay…it’s alright now.”

He didn’t know why he said it. Only that it felt like the right thing to say. The boy’s breath hitched and he hunched down even smaller, pulling the robes tighter in around him. Almost disappearing into their folds.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

Kanan reached out. His hand just barely touched the boy’s shoulder.

“What’s your n—”

The boy turned, lifting his face enough to glare up at Kanan with the fiercest, most intent teal green eyes, sharpened to even more crystal clarity by the ring of tears at their edge.

Kanan jerked his hand back. He stumbled a step in retreat.

The boy was wearing Jedi robes. The severed end of a padawan braid hung just behind his ear where it had been cut.

“I don’t wanna grow up to be you!” the boy shouted, voice breaking as it caught on another broken sob. High and shrill. “I don’t wanna lose everything!”

“But there’s more,” Kanan said, even as he backed away, his arms raised to guard himself. Against what, he didn’t know. The sight of his child self shattered his heart – again – and he wore his pain openly on his face, wanting to reach out and comfort but also wanting nothing more than to push the memory away. Bury it somewhere deep. Where it belonged. “There’s so much more to be found…”

The boy got up. He ran away into the darkness, quick to fade into the black.

Kanan lunged after him, his hand grabbing only empty space.

“Caleb!”

No answer. He was alone again.

Kanan turned, looking up and all around. He could still hear a more distant voice – a frantic one – calling his name.

Not Caleb…not the name he’d left behind. The new one he’d chosen for himself, settled into now like a pair of comfortable boots.

_Kanan…Kanan…!_

“Ezra?”

Kanan frowned. It came back to him slowly, but he remembered. The cave. The Sith. Escaping into the shuttle. Ezra’s terrifying power. And then…then he…

“Ezra! Where are you?”

Kanan called into the black. He looked all around him. He thought he ran, but…it was difficult to tell. He couldn’t…he couldn’t sense anything. He lifted one hand to touch his throat.

The collar was gone. And he didn’t feel wounded. Nothing hurt.

Kanan’s eyes went wide. Worry clenched his insides. He pressed his hand over his throat just to feel something, and froze.

Was he…? He couldn’t be…

Then a soothing hand came to rest on his shoulder, a voice caressing his senses like a gentle touch.

“You always were quick to jump to conclusions, padawan.”

Kanan turned again. The fear and stab of panic in his eyes faded.

Depa Billaba stood before him, exactly the way he remembered her: lips pulled into a wry smile, threads of silver spiraling in her hair. The depth of her eyes only hinted at the strength of wisdom and will behind them, and stars flickered upon her brow.

Kanan didn’t hesitate.

He went to her, folding into her arms and grabbing her into his for a hug of desperate, absolute relief.

“Master!” he breathed. Practically sobbed.

He felt her chuckle as she returned his embrace warmly, patting his back. Kanan drew back enough to look at her, keeping his hands along her arms to remain in contact – to hold onto her in case she would be the one to disappear next – and he looked to her eyes with an open wonder and awe. Suddenly thirteen years old again.

“How are you—?”

“You already know that answer,” she said.

Kanan flinched. His grip dug in tighter.

“I’m dead, aren’t I?”

“No.” She smiled and shook her head. “Not yet.” And tapped one finger pointedly against his wrist. “Despite your best efforts.”

Kanan ducked his head, suddenly sheepish.

“Yeah, well…things were kinda…you know.”

He rubbed the back of his head, grinning half-heartedly.

“It’s…good to see you…”

He looked around them in the black. Now that Master Billaba was here – maybe it was her light, radiating like the bright point at the center of her own universe – more shapes came into dim view. Some of them were nothing more than outlines: hints of darkest green or shades of purple among the black, fading in and out of focus. Some moved. Others echoed with strange sounds and what sounded like voices. Shouting or crying or laughing. Some sped by like comets: tiny points of light on an endless black skyscape.

“Where…what is this place?” Kanan scarcely breathed.

Master Billaba looked around them. Her hands lowered to fold in front of her. The same gentle smile hovered about her lips as she watched him marvel.

“Think of it as a step to the side of the universe,” she said. “Or a space in between.”

“Soooo…not-quite-death.” Kanan stood still as something bloomed bright nearby. Silent. Like the formation of a nebula. It stood out in color and stature and it almost hurt his eyes to look on, it was so bright.

But he did look. He recognized the scene.

It was Ezra, in the interior of the Imperial shuttle. And he was…dragging Kanan along the floor?

Kanan frowned as he watched, tilting his head. He could see himself, and the scene that he remembered only dimly in the moments before he’d lost consciousness. It was as though they watched it on a holoscreen, from an angle directly above.

“Ugh,” he said, cringing. “I look terrible.”

Master Billaba chuckled, moving to stand beside him.

“You have seen better days,” she agreed.

They fell quiet together to watch: Ezra pulling Kanan out of the pilot’s seat in the front of the shuttle, dragging him back across the floor without any apparent use of the Force. It looked like a strain for him.

Kanan frowned a little deeper.

He wasn’t _that_ heavy.

A shuttle that size wasn’t equipped for long distance travel. There weren’t any beds or bunks to speak of, so Ezra made do with the line of seats along one wall in the back. Hefting Kanan up, he laid him out across them, careful to guide his head to rest in his hand.

Kanan’s brow furrowed. He leaned closer.

He couldn’t hear what was going on except through a thick padding. Other ambient sounds of voices still floated around them, static interference. But it sounded like Ezra was shouting.

No, screaming.

Tears streaking down his face. He pounded on Kanan’s chest and yelled something Kanan couldn’t make out. Maybe that was for the best. He only tore himself away to attack the shuttle: ripping open panels and searching under seats for anything that looked like a supply pack. He tore them open and threw their contents aside when they didn’t suit his purposes, quickly littering the shuttle’s interior.

Finally a lockbox full of medpacs seemed to satisfy him. He stumbled across the mess back to Kanan to pull off his shirt and quickly apply them, nearly tearing them in his hurriedness.

Kanan sighed. Mentally, if not physically. Physicality here was a little…odd.

“You still believe this is your fault,” said Billaba.

“Isn’t it?” Kanan mumbled, deflated.

“You truly think your padawan is not responsible for any of his decisions?”

“He’s my padawan. I should have taught him better. I should have done something different…I should’ve… _known_.” Kanan shook his head, closing his eyes to the sight in front of him. “The Force is so strong with him.”

“And you never finished your own training.”

“I barely knew half the things I needed to know myself. How was I supposed to teach him?”

It was as if they’d never been apart. Master Billaba saw directly into his heart, speaking Kanan’s thoughts for him. Brought his guilt to the surface for confrontation. Her tone, the way she spoke…it reminded Kanan of days he thought he’d forgotten, when the two of them could talk about anything openly. Candidly. Without fear of judgement.

It was a good feeling.

“The Force brought you together for a reason.”

“The Force?” Kanan snapped his eyes open to look at her, sharp. Briefly accusing. “Is the Force responsible for everything? For what happened to you?”

Billaba raised an expectant eyebrow.

Kanan sighed, his posture sagging as he rubbed his face.

“I’m sorry. I know. I just…I failed him. I tried, and I failed. If I’d just been more…what he needed…”

“Then he wouldn’t have run away to the Sith.”

Kanan didn’t say anything. He looked down at the ground.

There was a surge of light from his master. What Kanan could only describe as a radiant sense of compassion warmed his side, and he felt her hand come to rest on his shoulder.

“And what do you think Ezra would say?” she said in a soft whisper.

Kanan lifted his head, turning his eyes almost mournfully back to the image of the shuttle. Ezra had applied the medpacs to Kanan as best he could, covering his wounds with the haphazard knowledge he possessed, reminding Kanan of his early days with Hera. When they were still learning to take care of each other. Now he’d slumped down beside him on the seat benches, his energy drained, leaning over Kanan as if already in mourning. Cradling his head to touch their brows and rock gently back and forth.

Maybe that sorrow weighing down Kanan’s heart was the echo of sentiment.

“I think he’d still insist I’m the best master there is,” he admitted with confessional defeat. “But he’s been wrong about a lot of things lately.”

Billaba squeezed his shoulder.

“Come with me,” she said. “I want to show you something.”

*****

They walked for a long time. Kanan didn’t know how it happened, but he knew when he was out of his depth. He ceased to question what time was like in this place or how ground could suddenly form beneath their feet and turn into a brightly-lit field covered in flowers. The warmth of a sun was on his face and wind brushed his cheeks. If he looked up, he could just make out the formations of clouds in a light blue sky.

Master Billaba walked in front of him. She was calm. Confident. Unless this was all some kind of trick – and Kanan didn’t think it was…in his heart, it felt right – he trusted his master to know what she was doing and what was going on far better than he did. He trusted her with everything.

He probably trusted her even more than he trusted Hera, or any of the others back on the _Ghost_.

That thought came with a little pang of guilt, so he didn’t pursue it any further.

“I’ve…missed you,” he said, when the quiet had gone on for too long. The distant sound of other voices never fully faded from around them, though they grew more faint. Sometimes Kanan could still see a flicker of movement just on the edge of his vision. A scene happening somewhere else.

He didn’t know how he knew that.

“I know,” Billaba answered, glancing over her shoulder to smile back at him. “But I’ve never been far.”

“Never?” Kanan suddenly looked worried. His eyes darted to one side. “As in…never…ever…? Like, how close are we talking?”

“I saw how you treated that poor girl back on Socorria, if that’s what you mean.” Billaba tsked and shook her head. “Poor, poor girl. She was so ready to marry you.”

Kanan’s face turned Togruta red and he promptly felt several inches shorter.

“I…tried to reach you…” He rubbed the back of his head when he was ready to speak again, keeping his eyes turned down. “Especially at first. Right after…”

He didn’t want to say it. But he didn’t have to. Master Billaba stopped and turned and reached out to clasp both his hands in her own, looking up at him.

“I know,” she said, her warmth a ripple through Kanan’s blood. “I strove to find you as well, but…you were so lost. And frightened.” She squeezed his hands. “It was a difficult time for all of us.”

They both looked down at their clasped hands. Both quietly acknowledged the sorrow and grief and loss of the past.

Kanan swallowed against the tightness in his throat.

“You’ve grown so tall.” Billaba reached up a hand to brush at his forehead. She found her smile again, coaxing Kanan’s to return as well.

“Yeah. Well…” He shrugged in an attempt at modesty. “Ship’s rations and back-alley diner food…”

He squeezed her hands, and remembered. Remembered what it was like to stand at her side, when he only came up to the level of her hip. He remembered the Clone Wars when they still meant something. The Republic when it still existed. He remembered the strong sense of right and wrong when they were still clearly defined opposites, and how he never questioned the path set out before him. Not as long as his master was there, and there was evil to fight.

He’d been guilty of that: enjoying the sense of purpose that came with war.

In his quieter moments, sometimes Kanan worried that fighting the Empire was just a way to reclaim that sense of purpose. That lost feeling of belonging.

Kanan could have stayed there forever with her, lost in memory, if the tug of new connections he’d made hadn’t pulled at his conscience.

Hera and the others were still out there.

“So,” he said, taking a breath to steady himself. “I guess this is where you help guide me through some major decision?”

Master Billaba laughed. A sound like flowing water.

“You’re so quick to assume?” she hummed.

Kanan shrugged.

“Well, that’s usually when Jedi Masters appear to someone, right? At some crucial point? There’s always a reason.”

She nodded, and squeezed his hands as her expression sobered.

“Yes. I’m afraid that is why I’m here. You stand at the cusp of a very important moment, padawan. Not to sound overly dramatic, but…a very literal matter of life, or death.”

“Whose?”

“Yours.”

“Oh. Right. Of course.” Kanan feigned a laugh and shifted his weight, shrugging as casually as he could manage. “Well, that’s an easy one, at least.”

“Is it?” Billaba’s expression shared nothing of his humor. “Your life has not been an easy one, Caleb. You’ve struggled every day since you were young against overwhelming odds, only to be met with grief and loss. You have sacrificed everything: yourself, your family, every part of your identity to the Jedi Order, so that they could mold you to their purposes. You gave up your chance for anything resembling a normal life to continue the fight with these rebels.” She paused, nodding her head, meeting his eyes with a grave severity. “No one would blame you at all if you made a decision once just for yourself.”

Kanan winced. Not from her words as much as from being called ‘Caleb.’

Only Hera called him that anymore, and only when she was mad.

“It never felt like much of a decision,” he mumbled, to himself as much as to her. “It was just the right thing to do.”

He could remember resisting initially, when he first met Hera. Being angry at the Force and the Empire and the universe in general for a very long time for what had happened to the Jedi. He’d spent years trying to pretend he could be anything else. Trying to pretend he could be happy being nobody. Doing nothing.

He’d been lying to himself.

Maybe it was his training. Maybe he would have been this way even if he wasn’t raised at the temple. Maybe doing what was right was so much a part of him that he couldn’t fathom doing anything else. Even there, thinking about it before the eyes of his master, he couldn’t imagine being anywhere than where he was. Fighting for what was right. Surrounded by family.

“But there is also a chance for peace,” Billaba went on, watching his eyes. “You can know the peace you know here forever. You can be one with the Force you’ve served your entire life. You have done your part. Your padawan is turned back to the right path, and he will find his way.”

She held out her hand. A small glowing image, like a round hologram, formed above her palm. Kanan tilted his head down to watch, breath held as he watched another scene play out before him.

He saw a planet. Floating peacefully in space.

“You will have access to knowledge here that your friends would not otherwise know,” said Billaba, her face unreadable, underlit by the glow of light. “You will be able to guide them in crucial times, such as this. You will still be Ezra’s master.”

“I’ll be a Force ghost,” Kanan murmured. “Great.”

But he watched the image of the planet. Felt an impending sense of dread when he focused on it. He could sense something was coming. Something terrible. Unstoppable.

A great streak of enormous green-tinted light blasted down from space toward the planet surface, ready to spear it. There was enough power and intensity behind the beam it looked like it would go right through the planet and out the other side.

Kanan put his hand out, covering his master’s, snuffing out the image and the knowledge of what happened next.

“I don’t think I have the right to know more than anyone else,” he said, as firm in his words as he was in his hold. “And…I don’t doubt the others could probably get along just fine without me. But…”

He glanced back over his shoulder. He didn’t know why. Maybe it felt like he’d left Ezra that way.

“…but I’d still rather be there for them. As much as I can.”

Kanan looked back to his master. He knew this wasn’t a test. Master Billaba had never been the sort to test people just to see what they would do. She was endlessly practical, and wise. She laid the situation out before him exactly as it was, just as she had back in the Clone Wars with battleplans and political situations to gain his input. She would listen to his decision, not argue, and support and guide him as best as she could to a solution.

Most of the time their opinions lined up anyway.

Now, Kanan saw tears in her eyes, and for a split second fear gripped him that he’d misstepped. That he’d somehow said exactly the wrong thing.

Then she stepped forward and flung her arms around him.

“I knew you would make the right decision,” she whispered, crushing him tight with joy into a fierce hug.

Kanan laughed a little, his arms embracing her in return.

“Is there a right or wrong decision?” He echoed her words from so long ago.

“No.” She settled back onto her feet, her hands on his shoulders and looking up to him with as much pride and love and praise as a master could hold for their student. “There is only the decision we make. Passion…”

“…yet serenity.”

“Chaos…”

“…yet harmony.”

“Ignorance…”

“…yet knowledge.”

“Emotion…”

“…yet peace.”

“Death…”

“…yet the Force.”

It wasn’t the official Jedi code. It was the one Master Billaba recited after emerging from her coma. The one the Council had always frowned a little upon, and why rumors ran wild about the instability of her mind.

But Kanan had always liked her version better. It felt less exclusive. Less extreme. More allowing for all the possibilities of the universe and everything the Force could encompass.

“I’ll trust the Force knows what it’s doing,” said Kanan, smiling as he hugged her.

Billaba pulled him down to kiss his forehead, cupping both his cheeks in her hands.

“I am so very, very proud of you,” she said quietly against his skin.

Kanan melted.

Then a sense of warmth bloomed in his chest. A tug, like a connection, gripped him with the purposeful glide of intent.

Kanan blinked and looked down.

He was…

He was glowing. Literally glowing. Swirls of white and gold and a warmth like love circled and closed around him, weaving in and out of what form he possessed like a threaded needle. Kanan’s eyes grew wide and he snapped a look up towards his master, a questioning and worry now all over his face.

“Uhhh…?” he prompted, careful not to move in case this was her doing.

But Master Billaba stepped back away from him. She folded her hands in front of her, and shook her head slowly.

“Your padawan,” she said. “He is calling you. Go to him.”

If Kanan could have felt his heartbeat, it would have stalled.

“But—!” He reached out to her.

Master Billaba smiled, and shook her head again. Her smile was small, and sad. Tears still glistened near her eyes, but she never looked more proud.

“You will always know how to find me,” she said, her words and the sensation of a ghostly hand brushing his cheek the last things Kanan experienced before he was yanked back into the dark. Through the black and the sounds and the colors and scenes the way they had come.

He resisted for only a moment, then turned, resolve clenched tight and his senses reaching out for Ezra to find him again.

*****

Kanan opened his eyes.

He shut them again immediately, wincing against the cold, glaringly bright light of the shuttle overheads. He waited for the pain lancing through his spinal column to fade, then squinted them open again, more carefully this time, giving his vision time to adjust before he grunted and lifted his head.

He couldn’t move much. Ezra had fallen asleep on his chest. Any other time, any other place, Kanan would have smirked and snorted a laugh at the sight: Ezra with his mouth just a little bit open, cheek fat and flattened where he rested his weight, the tips of his hair moving with each pass of breath. He was still covered in dirt and smears of mud and blasterfire from the fight – they both were – and Kanan did smile, though it was not with the light-hearted affection he might have shown to Ezra’s face, or even in private, a few short days ago.

He looked upon Ezra now like something cherished. Something he’d thought he had lost, and could scarcely believe was still there: still within his reach.

Maybe it was seeing his master again. Being reminded of her loss. Reminded of how much they all had to lose.

Gratitude and adoration and relief and a slight apprehension guided Kanan’s hands as he raised them: touched one to the top of Ezra’s head, smoothing back his hair. The other brushed loose strands away from his face, tucking them back behind his ear. Ezra’s hair was thick, clumped, in dire need of washing. Kanan could see the scars on his cheek more clearly with it out the way, and he wondered how much stress a Sith like Raizorr would have put on maintaining personal cleanliness. Or how much Ezra would have listened.

Ezra was beautiful. Kanan knew it – he’d always known it, ever since he first saw the flash of those startlingly blue eyes on Lothal – but he hadn’t allowed himself to overly dwell. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t proper. Ezra was a child, and Kanan was his teacher.

_Supposed to be,_ Kanan thought, with a strange relief and lightness in his shoulders. _Not anymore._

Ezra wasn’t a boy anymore. He’d grown a lot since they’d first met. Kanan ran his hands back through Ezra’s hair, catching on tangles. Ezra had been letting it grow out. It was longer now. And the way he carried himself…the way he’d fought that Sith…the agency of making his own decisions and doing what he did, going into the danger with his eyes wide open…

Ezra had always carried himself with a certain maturity – a development of necessity, from the way he grew up – but in the past few days Kanan could only think he’d witnessed a shedding of the last possible vestiges of innocence and naiveté that Ezra possessed. Maybe he wasn’t done growing, but of becoming his own person, stepping into that role and claiming his own place in the galaxy, Kanan had no more doubt.

Maybe he really didn’t have anything left to teach him.

It was a bittersweet realization, mixed with pride and grief. Kanan felt it swell in his heart and closed his eyes as the flood ran its course. His hand came to rest over the back of Ezra’s head, his other arm tucking in around his shoulders, squeezing him briefly tight.

Did all parents go through something like this?

Ezra stirred, drawn out of sleep by the movement. He made a low, grunting sound and moved his hand up Kanan’s chest, wincing as he lifted his head.

For a moment their eyes met and it took a heartbeat or two for sharp awareness to return to Ezra’s eyes.

When it did, he sucked in a sharp breath.

“Kanan!”

He lunged forward, throwing his arms around him.

“You’re awake!”

Kanan hissed and reeled and would have scrambled away if he’d had the room and mobility. As it was, he could only tighten and curl up against him as Ezra’s weight pressed right onto those parts of him that hadn’t quite healed, jaw clenched tight as he ground through his teeth.

“Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow…!”

“Sorry! Sorry.”

Ezra pulled back, sitting up and just to the side of him along the row of seats as Kanan recovered. He leaned forward in his eagerness, maintaining enthusiastic attention as Kanan shifted and pushed himself up, holding his breath until the throbs of pain ebbed away. Kanan scooted himself back to prop his shoulders into the shuttle’s rear wall, then rested a little easier.

_“Ugh…”_

“How do you feel?” Ezra asked, hovering close.

“Like I’ve been imprisoned for days and beaten up by a Sith.” Kanan paused, halfway through rubbing a hand over his eyes. He thought for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. Pretty much almost exactly like that.”

Ezra grinned, laughing, breathless for sheer relief. He pushed back his hair from his face and set his weight on his heels, just looking at him. The light in his eyes was contagious and Kanan couldn’t help but offer a small smile back.

For a moment, they were themselves. Nothing at all had happened and neither of them had changed. It was as it had always been.

But a moment was all it lasted.

Ezra was first to drop his eyes.

“We’re…almost there. To Garel,” he said, gesturing towards the front of the shuttle.

“Yeah,” said Kanan without enthusiasm. He cleared his throat. “Any… _rnn_ …any word from the others?”

“I contacted them to let them know we were coming, and that you were safe.” Ezra glanced aside to a random panel on the wall, hanging half open where he’d dug through it in his search for medpacs. “I was…thinking…I could drop you off, and then take the shuttle myself to—”

“What.”

“Come on, Kanan.” Ezra exasperated, rolling his eyes. “No one is gonna want me back. Not after what I did.”

“You are not going anywhere—!”

Kanan reached out and grabbed a handful of Ezra’s hair, lifting him like a scruffed cat. Ezra squawked and flailed until he let go.

Kanan winced as the movement pulled at his wounds.

“Hey! C’mon! I just patched you up.” Ezra pushed him back down onto the bench, his shoulders to the wall. Kanan hissed in pain until he settled.

“You’re coming back with me,” he still ground between his teeth.

Ezra sat down on the bench beside him, using the excuse of checking the state of Kanan’s collection of medpacs to avoid his eyes.

“You really think the others will let me?” he mumbled, letting his hands work. “Will Hera?”

Kanan had to admit he flinched at that, but he wasn’t about to let Ezra throw his biggest weakness at him so easily.

“Why don’t you give them the chance to make that decision?” Kanan raised his hand, content to let Ezra worry about the medpacs, and touched the back of his head. Fingers catching in his hair. Kanan lowered his voice, gripping tight. “I just got you back. I don’t want to lose you again.”

Ezra’s hands slowed, then stilled. He kept his face turned down but his grip tightened on the medpacs, as did the line of his jaw.

“You never lost me,” he mumbled with growling insistence. He took a quick breath before Kanan could answer. “You opened your wounds up again. You’re bleeding.”

Kanan went along with the subject change.

“Any medpacs left?”

“No.” Ezra pulled the medpacs away, making Kanan wince at the sting of sticky resistance. He didn’t look too closely at the damage – he thought he might pass out again if he did – but he knew it was bad. Black scorches of blaster marks cracked and cauterized on his skin. The worst was his shoulder, where he caught a glance before wincing away from the long, deep gashes left by Raizorr’s teeth.

That was going to be an impressive scar.

“Can’t wait to explain that one to Hera,” he pretended to laugh. Then coughed.

Ezra sat back, his hands falling to his lap.

“This is my fault.”

“Mostly. Yeah.”

Ezra shook his head. Rueful sorrow was quick to leave him, replaced by an angry determination. He clenched his hands and leaned forward again, tension in his stance.

“Let me try something.”

“What…?”

Before Kanan could stop him, Ezra had leaned forward, closely aligning their bodies so he could put his hands on Kanan’s chest: one at his shoulder, where the damage was the worst, the other over his heart. Fingers spread. Pressing indentations into his skin.

Kanan held his breath. He held himself very, very still, watching Ezra close his eyes and concentrate and the way loose strands of his hair fell and caught against his eyelashes.

Then he gasped – Kanan…or maybe it was Ezra? maybe it was both of them – as a warm glow of light began to radiate from his hands, sweeping over and sinking into Kanan’s body. Kanan felt the tug and pull of it. The same as from his dream.

Vision.

Whatever it had been.

_“Your padawan…he is calling you. Go to him.”_

Kanan lay stunned, shocked into silence – why did Ezra keep doing this to him? – as Ezra healed him.

He didn’t know Ezra could do that.

But Ezra had done a lot of things lately that surprised him.

Kanan could feel it: a deep resonance inside him. More than just healing wounds. More than knitting flesh. It was quintessential life energy being poured into him through – from? – Ezra’s conduit. Ezra reaching inside him to stitch back together what was broken. The disciplined focus of pure willpower.

And Ezra…there was so much life in him. So much he had to give. Kanan could feel it – he could see it – like warm light radiant about his person. He gave and gave and poured it into Kanan without thought or regard to himself, and Kanan felt himself grow tight with fear that Ezra might run out of light completely. That his own would go out. But there seemed no end to it.

It was exactly as it had been in the cave, only this was bright where there had been darkness before. Selfless sacrifice for the sake of another. In a way, it was still an act of selfishness – Ezra striving to keep what he wanted – but how such giving could be considered the dark side, Kanan couldn’t fathom.

Maybe Ezra wasn’t as lost to the dark side as he’d feared.

It went on for what seemed like forever, until Ezra finally sagged from exhaustion, and collapsed on top of him.

Their hearts beat in time, threads like fate woven around what Kanan could only think to call their souls.

Kanan couldn’t speak. Words of any form felt insufficient. Instead his arms came up automatically to hold him, cradling him close as Ezra shivered, panting to catch his breath.

Kanan stroked his hair, holding him for as long as he needed.

When Ezra raised his eyes, their eyes met.

Neither of them said anything. There didn’t feel a need to.

The kiss that followed seemed only natural. Ezra tipped up his head and Kanan leaned down to meet him, holding his cheeks, both their eyes falling closed as mouths met and parted, coming together with a sigh of long-waiting relief.

It was almost painful, that first time. The culmination of something becoming real that they’d both been wanting for a long, long time.

Maybe that was why it was short. Almost chaste. Like a test to get that first time out of the way.

“Are we gonna talk about it?” Ezra mumbled, lingering close so their foreheads touched and breath mingled, lips warm in the wake.

“Talk about what?” Kanan murmured. Thought and words slow to come. Distracted by combing his fingers back into Ezra’s hair.

“What happened in the cell…”

“What’s to talk about?”

They didn’t have to talk. They could both feel.

Ezra rose up over his lap. His hands cupped the back of Kanan’s head. They slid down along his jaw, cupped under his cheeks. Down his neck.

He touched the Force collar still – after everything – around his neck.

“Take it off,” Kanan whispered.

Ezra nodded, and with one gesture of his hand deactivated the electronic lock from within.

It clunked down to the floor with a heavy finality, rolling to a stop against the opposite wall of the shuttle.

Everything…the Force…Ezra…flooded back in at once.

Kanan bowed forward only a little, his hands tightening over Ezra’s shoulders as he held on. Whimpered. All but bowled over by the overwhelming sense of…of everything. The Force and light and life and his connection with Ezra _so strong,_ like it had been reinforced by their ordeal rather than broken and burned now brighter than ever.

His hands shook as he lifted his head, each breath trembling, and looked to Ezra’s eyes.

Ezra’s gaze reached back to him. Worry. Fear.

Love.

His hands came to rest over Kanan’s wrists and squeezed gently, as if to stop their quivering.

The touch ignited a spark along Kanan’s already frayed nerves.

Kanan pulled him down. Ezra bent his head, hands moving to touch him, to feel him – the spread of his healed wounds, digging in to test their integrity, making Kanan gasp from the sharp stabs of sensation – as they kissed. Vigor renewed and enthusiasm mounted. Breath came sharp. They broke apart only to look into each other’s eyes for brief confirmation, then dove back in again. Deeper than before, hands touching, roving, supporting the other’s neck and pulling in one another’s hair.

Ezra leaned his weight forward in a surge of want so intense Kanan’s stomach practically abandoned him, swinging low and setting a fire through his thighs. Kanan’s back hit the wall and he winced, cringed full-bodied, his grunt of pain half-muffled where it was still pressed to Ezra’s mouth.

“Nhhn—still sore…still sore!”

Ezra broke away, pulling back just enough to look down at him. His eyes were dark, his face flushed with a look of intent that didn’t understand why they had stopped. His hands still pressed his palms flat over Kanan’s chest, holding him still.

“Sorry…” he breathed, though he sounded less than sincere. Distracted. Already planning where he intended to attack next.

Kanan didn’t know how it was going to be his throat, but he didn’t question it. He just leaned his head back and braced himself for the feel of Ezra’s tongue against the raw patches of skin where the collar had rubbed. His teeth against his beard. On his collarbone.

Kanan clenched his eyes shut tight, and held on.

Hera was going to _kill_ him.


	5. Chapter 5

Things actually went a lot smoother than Kanan thought they would.

Which, given that he thought they wouldn’t have gone at all, wasn’t saying much.

They landed the shuttle in the Garel spaceport, far away from the Ghost or any of the other rebel ships in hiding, and walked the distance to the rendezvous point.

Kanan could sense Ezra’s footsteps growing heavier with each corner they turned. He could hear the hesitation in his breath. See the tightness of his shoulders the closer they drew.

He couldn’t really blame him. Kanan knew what waited for them once they reached the proper hangar bay.

He put his hand on Ezra’s shoulder, squeezing a small show of reassurance.

Ezra lifted his eyes, smiling a little, grateful under the fall of hair that partially concealed his face. The way he looked at Kanan seemed… _felt_ …different. Like something was there Kanan had never seen before – or, more likely, something that had always been there and he’d failed to notice. It felt like a new level of understanding. Familiarity. Depth.

Want.

They hadn’t done much more on the shuttle after that first session of heated kissing – Kanan was just too sore – but the sensation lingered fresh in both their minds. Kanan could still feel Ezra’s touch on his lips. His teeth scraping his skin. The feel of Ezra’s breath rise and fall under his hands where Kanan held him tight across his back…

Kanan blinked and shook his head.

_Stay focused. Mind on the present…there’s a good Jedi…_

They walked into the hangar together, Kanan’s hand still on Ezra’s shoulder.

Hera, Sabine, Zeb, and Chopper were waiting for them.

Ezra shrank several inches as all eyes settled on him. No one said anything right away, but arms crossed and eyebrows raised, a sense of expectancy filling in the air.

Kanan and Ezra stopped a respectful distance away. Ezra slowly pulled away from under Kanan’s arm.

He shuffled forward a few steps, his eyes on the ground, hands fidgeting with the pockets of his vest. Then he straightened, took a breath, and cleared his throat.

“Well…um. Hi, guys…?”

He peeked upward, a hopeful smile lifting one side of his mouth as he feigned a casual wave. It was the exact sort of smile he’d used when he was younger to try and get out of trouble, relying on the idea that he was simply too cute to punish.

Three unamused glares and one rude sound from a droid answered him.

Ezra dropped his hand. And the smile.

“Right. So, I…uhh…guess I’ll keep this short…”

Nothing.

Ezra took a deep breath.

“I know there’s…nothing I can say that’ll make up for what I did. I’m sorry, but…sorry isn’t enough. I’ll…I’m going to do everything I can to make it up to you! I’d like to come back…” There his voice took on a sound of recitation. He’d been planning this speech out in his head since before they arrived. “…because…because you guys are like my famil—no, you _are_ my family. I don’t think I belong anywhere else. I tried it, and…and it just wasn’t right. So…if you’ll have me…”

He braced himself, eyes on the ground, arms stiff and hands clenched at his sides as he waited for judgement.

The hangar bay was quiet. The crew of the Ghost looked between each other, then down at Kanan, who held out his hands in a shrug and maintained as neutral an expression as possible.

He did a terrible job of it, especially when he met Hera’s eyes. But whether or not Ezra was allowed back onto the Ghost wasn’t his decision.

Surprisingly – or, not so surprisingly – it was Zeb who stepped forward first. His feet clamped heavily down the loading ramp until they came to ground with a sense of finality, large and imposing as he moved to stand over Ezra, dwarfed in his shadow.

Ezra cringed down into his shoulders a little more, half expecting to be hit.

But all Zeb said was: “It’s not so easy to give up on family,” and reached out one massive hand to plop onto Ezra’s head, ruffling his hair.

“Welcome back, kid.”

Ezra smiled, tension flooding from his posture, hope daring to shine in his eyes.

“Thanks, Zeb.”

Zeb laughed, tugging him close into a hug. Ezra returned it, though as he pulled back, Zeb caught him, claws digging into the collar of his vest.

“But if you ever pull a stunt like that again,” he rumbled. “I will _end_ you.”

“I believe you,” Ezra gasped, pushing until Zeb let go and he could breathe again. Zeb laughed and yanked him in for a more proper hug, patting Ezra’s back and ruffling his hair one more time before they both turned to look back to the rest of the crew.

Ezra looked a little braver.

Sabine didn’t say anything. She sauntered down the ramp, approaching to stand before Ezra and looking him levelly in the eye. Measuring him with a glance up and down.

Then she smiled, perfectly pleasant.

“Sabine,” Ezra started to say, sheepish. “I, uhh—” 

She punched him in the stomach.

“Good to see you again, Ezra.”

Then walked away.

Ezra bent double, staggering and coughing. Zeb held his shoulders to steady him so he wouldn’t fall over.

When Ezra looked up again, it was into the stern eyes of Hera. She hadn’t moved from her stance at the top of the loading ramp, looking down with imperiously folded arms.

Ezra gulped.

Chopper whirred.

“Are you going to do anything like that ever again?” said Hera, her jaw tight.

“No ma’am,” Ezra squeaked.

“Are you going to disobey orders again? Run off by yourself? Not consult with the rest of us before chasing some half-formed plan you came up with on your own?”

“No ma’am.”

“If you come back to this ship, I’m going to work you like the last blurrg on the whole of Ryloth.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“If you make a single step out of line – even _one_ – I will dump you on an asteroid in the middle of nowhere and leave you for the space worms. Do you understand me?”

“Yes ma’am…captain…general!” Ezra backed up a step as Hera stomped down the ramp towards him, each slam of her boot adding emphasis to her words. The increase in titles didn’t appear to dissuade her intent, and she stopped only when she was looming over him herself, glowering down where he’d backed into Zeb and couldn’t go any further.

“Good,” she said.

Then she hugged him.

Zeb laughed and clapped them both on the back, diffusing what was left of the tension.

“There. Now that’s better,” he rumbled, grinning. “I was kinda starting to miss you, kid. No one else around here is gonna help me keep Chopper in line.”

Chopper protested, zapping the air with his electrical prod.

“It is a two-person job,” said Ezra, his laugh a nervous one. His eyes followed Hera as she detached from him and went to Kanan next, standing tip-toe to hug him warmly around his shoulders.

Kanan’s eyes closed for a moment as he hugged her back, turning his face in to the cradle of her neck. When he opened them again, he met Ezra’s eyes over her shoulder. He was quick to look away.

“C’mon, kid.” Zeb clapped him hard on the back, turning Ezra towards the ship. “Let’s get you settled. You’re…eh…gonna have to move into a different bunk.”

“What?” Ezra stumbled, but went. “Why?”

“Well yours is kinda…taken.”

“I leave for a few days and you guys gave my room away?” Ezra laughed, though it died as Zeb looked away with a certain guilt, rubbing the back of his neck.

The humor bled from his face.

“Wait. You really did, didn’t you?”

“Don’t worry,” said Zeb, flinching. “You can have Kanan’s.”

“Hey!”

“It’s not like you ever use it!”

“So who has my bunk now?” Ezra stepped up the loading ramp with Zeb, Chopper, and Sabine, Kanan and Hera following in behind. They all moved together and, just like that, it felt like barely anything had changed. They were still a family. Still close.

“Tell him, Zeb.” Sabine smiled, enjoying the look on Zeb’s face far too much.

“Eh…” Zeb could only stall so long, his eyes avoidant. “That would be…well…Agent Kallus.”

Ezra stopped where he was. And stared.

“—wait, what?”

Chopper zapped him.

*****

The family was back together. Almost immediately they went back on duty, leaving Garel behind for open space, running missions against the Empire in the ever ongoing fight.

There was a brief adjustment period before everyone settled comfortably into the new bunk arrangements. Kallus moved in with Zeb (with only mild complaining…as an ISB officer he’d gotten used to having private quarters) and Kanan started sleeping in Hera’s bunk full time (which he’d been more or less doing already…it wasn’t as though he had a lot of belongings to shuffle). Sabine kept her bunk – as if anyone could tell her otherwise – and Ezra was allowed to take Kanan’s old room as his own.

Ezra came out on the best side of that deal, as far as Kanan was concerned.

“Now I can store my helmet collection here instead of the old comm tower,” Ezra beamed.

“Yeah, because having all those bucketheads look down at you while you sleep isn’t creepy _at all_ ,” said Sabine.

Maybe it was forgiveness. A sign of trust. Though Hera wouldn’t let him program his own passcode into the door so Ezra could lock it just yet.

“That’s a priviledge you’ll have to earn,” she said, and Ezra didn’t argue.

It seemed fair.

Kanan and Ezra hadn’t been gone for very long, all things considered, but it felt like the universe had changed.

Barely a day went by without Ezra trying to get him alone.

“Here.” He handed over the pieces of Kanan’s lightsaber.

Kanan stared down at them in his hands, barely touching them – light, reverent – and scarcely able to believe it.

“How did you…?”

“I took it after the guards confiscated it on Malachor.” Ezra folded his hands behind his back, shrugging one shoulder in pretend nonchalance. “I didn’t want Raizorr to have it.”

“Still a thieving lothrat,” Kanan smiled.

They laughed together, though it died quickly. Ezra looked up to him and Kanan clipped the lightsaber pieces back onto his belt so he could pretend he didn’t see. Pretend he didn’t feel the look in his eyes, reaching, like a longing physically felt. Only barely restrained by the sound of the others down the corridor.

“Soooo…” Ezra prompted, slow and tentative.

Kanan’s jaw tightened.

“I should go help Hera,” he said, brushing on by him to head for the cargo bay. “There’s a lot of work to do if we’re gonna refit that shuttle.”

He felt Ezra’s eyes on his back as he went. A sense of pining like he’d never known.

Kanan managed to dodge him every day after that. He made up excuses. Found distractions in pretend situations. He conveniently spent most of his time in the Ghost’s common room or wherever the others were already gathered, quietly thanking the Force and the ship’s limited space layout.

At night he lay curled against Hera in her bunk, awake and anxious, now and then able to feel Ezra’s prod against his thoughts in a timid intrusion. Making sure he was alright.

Ezra had done the same thing before, after rescuing Kanan from Mustafar. Constantly checking on him over their connection to make sure he was still there.

 _I’m fine,_ Kanan thought back, just as he did then, with a mental sigh that made Ezra retreat. Leaving Kanan alone with the guilt of pushing people away. Of keeping secrets.

Sometimes he would stroke Hera’s lekku as he fell asleep, finding a soothing meditation in the motion, and imagine ways to tell her what happened.

Which he would.

Eventually.

*****

Golden light fell in thick bands over the interior of the Ghost’s cockpit, casting it in shades of deepest yellow. Dust particles floated in the air, erupting in bright flashes when they turned just the right way to catch the sun’s light: a drifting galaxy all their own through the gentle quiet.

Kanan leaned his weight against the entryway, admiring the mundane beauty of it. Reflecting on the analogous comparison one could draw between dust and galaxies. Appreciating the moment of serenity for what it was: a borrowed calm in the center of a universal storm.

It also let him stall just a few moments longer before finally doing what he’d made up his mind to do.

Hera was on the floor, scooted on her back up underneath one of the main control panels. Her voice came muffled as she barked instructions at Chopper, who rolled back and forth around the cockpit’s interior, plugging in to this port or that port and handing her tools.

Kanan watched for awhile, wallowing in sentiment. Admiring how the slants of light fell and colored Hera’s skin, green darkened here and there with the a smudge of grease or engine oil. She’d undone her flight suit to let the top half hang, the arms of it tied around her waist, leaving her free to move in the more work-friendly undershirt beneath.

Kanan sighed to himself.

He loved her. He loved her just as much as when he’d first realized it – no, more than that, now – the knowledge of her intelligence, passion, caring, and capability only honing her attractiveness the longer Kanan had the priviledge to know her. Sometimes he felt his heart ache with how much. His throat tightened now to think about it, seized by a swell of appreciation.

Maybe it was the lingering knowledge of recent events that made him feel so sentimental. What happened with Ezra, rather than make him question, only seemed to reaffirm how Kanan felt about her. Reminded him of it. Which, in turn, only increased the guilt that grew exponentially every time his eyes shifted to Ezra across a room. Every time he thought about him.

Trying to ignore his feelings and waiting for them to go away on their own wasn’t working. (He really should know better by now.) Hera deserved to know. For as long as they’d known each other, they had always been up front and open. About everything. They didn’t have secrets.

Well, not many.

It was what Hera would have wanted.

Chopper beeped something rude and rolled across Kanan’s foot, snapping him out of his reverie.

“ _Agh!_ Chopper!”

Chopper blew the droid equivalent of a raspberry and continued on, undeterred.

“Oh, Kanan.” Hera said from under the panel, twisting just enough to get a look at him as Kanan hopped on one foot until the other stopped throbbing. “There you are.”

“Uhh. Yeah! Hera. I was just—”

“Hand me the hydrospanner on the console there, would you? Chopper can’t reach it.”

Kanan set his foot down, rubbing it against the back of his calf. His eyes scanned the cockpit until he spotted the right tool, and grabbed it to hand down to her. Chopper beeped and grumbled in the background.

“Hera,” he said, taking a breath. Lowering his voice to proper sobriety. “We need to talk.”

“Okay.” She disappeared beneath the panel again, overtaken by the sounds of something whirring and metal clanking metal. “So talk. I’m listening.”

Kanan darted his eyes around him, careful to step out of Chopper’s way as he rolled around the cockpit. The sounds continued and Chopper kept up his grumbling, beeping about one thing or another.

“It’s…” Kanan did his best to keep his voice even, and still audible. “It’s…something happened. With Ezra.”

Hera grunted. Snapped something into place.

“I take it you mean besides the whole running off to join the Sith thing?”

“Yeah. Besides that. It was…” Kanan rubbed the back of his neck, hanging his head. “Well…”

“Hand me the gyrospanner?”

Kanan handed her the gyrospanner.

“It was—”

“Screwdriver.”

He handed her the screwdriver.

“—on the shuttle, after we left, and—”

“Soldering gun.”

“—it was on the way back when we—”

“Chopper! Help me hold up this panel. I’ve almost got it back into place.”

Kanan sighed, stepping out of the way. Commotion followed, then a snap, and Hera’s triumphant hum to herself as she mentally checked off one of the many things currently populating her to-do list. Chopper waved his manipulator arms in the air and said…something…while Kanan pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose and blew out a hard breath, closing his eyes.

“There. That’s done.” Hera pushed herself out from beneath the panel, wiping her hands off on a rag. “Now all that’s left is to—”

“Hera, I kissed Ezra!” he blurted out, throwing his hand wide with more emphasis than he intended. “A lot! Several times!”

Quiet dominated the cockpit. Even Chopper had quit beeping.

Kanan looked down and Hera met his eyes as she pushed herself up, setting her dirty rag aside on the forward console. She did it without looking.

She looked him over instead, one eyebrow cocked just a little, along with the barest quirk of her mouth.

Kanan flinched, even moreso when her look dragged on and on and she didn’t say anything.

“Why am I getting the feeling you already know?” he murmured.

Hera’s smile spread a little further.

“Is that all you did?”

Heat flooded Kanan’s face and spread all the way down to his chest. Hera turned her back to set her handful of tools aside, listening to him sputter until he managed to get out something coherent.

“What do you mean ‘is that all?!’” His voice broke on a shrill note.

“I mean is that all you did? Kissing?”

“Well, yes! But—”

“Guess I owe Sabine fifty credits.”

Behind him, Chopper laughed.

Kanan looked back at the droid. He looked at Hera. The whole of the galaxy for a moment felt like one big conspiracy as he tried to reason it out in his head. Had Ezra beaten him to it? Did she already know everything? Exactly how much did she know, and who else may she have told? Sabine liked secrets even less than the rest of them, and she might have told Ketsuo, and while Kanan didn’t know what exactly a bounty hunter would do with that kind of information it still made him a little queasy to think about what if Zeb knew oh Force he was the worst at keeping his mouth shut about things like this…

Hera rolled her eyes.

“Look,” she said, turning back to face him. “I knew _something_ had to have happened between you two. Ever since you got back, you’ve hardly been able to be in the same room as him, and the way Ezra looks at you…it’s like you’ve taken away his Force priviledges! I know you, love. It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

Kanan’s mouth was open. He shut it.

“You’re…why didn’t you say anything?”

“Maybe I was under the impression the two of you could handle whatever the problem was like a couple of rational adults? Clearly I was mistaken.”

“…but…you’re…you’re not upset?”

“Why would I be upset?”

“I don’t know. I thought you’d be upset!”

“Well I’m not!”

“How can you not be!?”

“Do I need a reason, Kanan Jarrus?”

“I’d like one, yes!”

“You _really_ think this is the top of my priority list right now?”

“If you’re not upset then why are you shouting!”

“I’m only shouting because you’re shouting!”

“I’m shouting because I thought you’d be upset!”

Chopper backed slowly out of the room, turning quickly to wheel away down the hall. The momentary distraction was enough for Kanan and Hera to break away from each other, retreating a step or two and glaring at different parts of the cockpit while they waited for tempers to calm.

Kanan’s mind reeled. He could barely think straight. Hera had always been supportive and open-minded, but he caught himself thinking…wishing…that she would be mad at him. Upset, at the very least. Maybe it would justify his own worry to himself. Maybe he just wanted to be judged. It was better than thinking her care was so little towards him that she could brush something like this off with minimal bother.

And he knew that wasn’t true.

“Do you love him?”

Her voice drew him back. Kanan looked up from where he rubbed at his face.

He had to blink once or twice before he could answer.

“Yes, but—”

“And by loving him, does that mean you love me less?”

That, Kanan didn’t have to think about.

“No.” His answer came immediate, firm with conviction. He met her eyes as he said it. “Never.”

Hera smiled at last, closing the distance between them to reach out, cupping his cheek in her hand. Her thumb brushed his cheekbone and her fingers slid down to stroke his beard, admiration plain in her eyes in the way she looked at him.

Kanan melted.

“Then what’s the problem?”

He ducked his eyes, tugged by the weight of guilt once more.

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he mumbled.

“You’ve known me how long, Kanan?”

“Not long enough.” He caught her hand and kissed it, squeezing her fingers in his own.

“And you really think I would be jealous? That I’d be that petty and possessive of you?”

He winced.

She was right.

“No…”

He thought again.

“Well, maybe a little?”

Hera took hold of his cheeks. She lifted her face to him, holding him in place with a gentle firmness.

“Kanan, listen to me. I love you. But with the sort of lives we lead, you never know what tomorrow will bring. Or if there even will be a tomorrow.” Her fingertips threaded back into his hair as she brought him down, touching their foreheads together. The tips of her lekku curled and she lowered her voice. “If you have the chance to make a connection with someone, you take it. Understand?”

Kanan closed his eyes, submitting himself in her presence. Humbled and shamed and never more in love.

“I understand,” he said, smiling for what felt like the first time in ages. When he opened his eyes again, she filled his vision. Beautiful and strong and present. “I love you.”

Hera smiled.

“I know, dear.”

His arms closed around her, and they kissed, surrounded by cascading light and the warmth of unwritten possibility.


	6. Chapter 6

The sun was warm on Kanan’s shoulders as he made his way across the fields, heading out and away from the Ghost. The sky was clear and a gentle breeze blew in his face, making the tall grasses of Lothal ripple like a golden sea. In the distance, giant mounds peeked just above the rolling hills lining the horizon, their tips like the outline of an ancient city.

It felt simultaneously strange and a relief to be back on Lothal. It wasn’t any one good thing that had led them there – another mission, another day against the Empire – but…it was familiar. Nostalgic. It called to memory days of the past, when things felt…not easier, but…simpler. When they were still stationed planetside and getting a feel for each other as a crew and a rebel cell. They’d run their first missions here. They’d gotten to know the planet.

This was where they’d first encountered Kallus, and…it was where they’d first met Ezra.

The sparks of new beginnings.

Kanan slowed as he crested the top of a hill, pausing to fold his arms and look down over the sight that lay in the next dip below.

He took a deep breath, both knowing and not-knowing that he would find Ezra there.

Ezra had his back to him, practicing using gestures of his hands to hurl boulders larger than he was at a target a fair distance away. He hit it more often than not, the sound of splintering rock as it shattered resonant over the hills. The power and focused intent behind each unleashed coil made Kanan flinch, his hand digging tighter into his arm as he tried not to think about Malachor.

Ezra noticed him after only a few moments.

“Hey,” he said, a pause in the slam of rocks as he turned to face him. He dragged one arm across his brow, wiping away sweat and damp hair from his eyes.

Kanan tried to smile, small and restrained.

“You’re getting pretty good at that.”

“Thanks.” Ezra smiled too, hope lifting his voice. He set his hands on his hips with a confident puff of his chest. “Lots of practice. And…I’ve had good teachers.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Both of them immediately winced. They dropped their eyes at the same time.

Kanan folded his arms a little tighter. He held his elbows, tucked in close to his sides.

“You don’t have to stop…”

“No.” Ezra rubbed the back of his neck. Scratched at his hair. “You should give me pointers. Right? I mean, if you want to.”

“Actually, I came out here…to…”

“Yeah?” Ezra peeked up when Kanan trailed away, prompting. Looking to him with a pet’s ready eagerness.

For a moment, quiet reigned as wind made the grass whisper and blew lines of dust across the ground. Kanan felt it tug at his ponytail. He noticed the way it blew Ezra’s hair across his face. The way his impossibly blue eyes shone underneath, lit with that ceaseless confidence.

His heart staggered a little.

He knew what he wanted to say. The words tugged at his lips. But his throat clamped down tight, refusing to let them rise.

Ezra felt it too. The heavy awkwardness filling the space between them.

“Well, just to…” Kanan tried, cringing even as he said it. “See how…you were doing?”

That was pathetic.

“Oh.” Ezra glanced away to one side, then down to the ground. Pretending to be interested in anything else. “I’m…fine. I guess. How’s the…refit going?”

“Fine. Almost finished.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Quiet again. Kanan could feel the tumbleweeds roll by.

They both took a deep breath at the same time.

“Wanna spar?”

“Wanna sp—oh.”

Tension flooded out of Kanan’s shoulders. He nodded his head, overly vigorous and relieved.

“Please.”

He loped down the hill into the dip between them, moving to one side of the flat spread beneath so that he and Ezra faced each other. They ignited their lightsabers – stun setting – and circled each other slowly, taking measure of one another’s stance.

This, at least, they could do.

Ezra attacked first, launching himself forward with a speed and suddenness that barely gave Kanan time to get his blade up. Blocking the first flurry of attacks rattled him all the way down to his bones. The scar tissue across his shoulder throbbed in as it pulled tight. He moved, dodged, blocked, but Ezra caught him with a kick planted square in his chest, knocking Kanan back and off his feet.

He landed with a grunt in the dust, looking up at Ezra, who twirled his lightsaber and smirked.

“C’mon, old man,” he teased, with something like their old rapport. “You can do better than that.”

“Old—? You’re confusing me with Rex.”

“Rex would have avoided that.”

Kanan grumbled, climbing back up to his feet. Ezra held off long enough to allow him, and they circled again, Ezra’s posture smug and oozing confidence in every step.

This. This felt better. This was familiar. Ezra’s easy confidence. Bantering while they practiced. Kanan trying to stay focused to set a good example. Eventually failing and getting caught up in jokes and puns and fancy tricks.

For a moment, it was like Malachor never happened.

They rushed in with a fresh burst of energy. Lightsabers clashed, struck, blocked. They kicked up clouds of dust around them, making the air thick and hard to breathe. Boots and elbows came into play when they were close, the strict tenets of Jedi training thrown out a long time ago in favor of scrappy, opportunistic survival. Twice more Ezra knocked him down, though Kanan didn’t stay there. A few times Kanan broke through his blocks, landing a hit along Ezra’s back or sides.

It felt like a more evenly matched fight than they’d ever had before. Kanan fought in earnest, scrambling and lunging and seizing each flash of insight he could to slip through Ezra’s defenses. Ezra countered, anticipating his movements, forcing Kanan to adjust and use his own momentum against him. They dodged, parried, attacked, and spun, both of them the calm centers of their own raging storm.

It was the exact sort of harmonic synchronicity every Jedi strove for.

But a part of Kanan didn’t want to overly touch Ezra. Of that, he was keenly aware.

And so was Ezra.

“What’s wrong?” he said over the hissing connection of their blades as they locked, for a moment trapped close, face to face, the light of blue and green caught in their eyes. “You’re holding back.”

“No I’m no—”

“Don’t say you’re not. I can tell.”

Ezra twisted free. He threw out his hand and shoved Kanan back with a pulse of Force power, watching as he hit the ground and rolled – hard – until he came up in a crouch.

Ezra glared after him, flipping his lightsaber in one hand.

“This is the longest you’ve talked to me since we got back.”

Kanan snapped his eyes up, a part of his hair dislodged from its band falling forward over his face. He felt the movement and saw a flicker of shadow overhead just in time to roll away as Ezra came down from high above. His landing splintered the ground in a wide impact crater, burying his lightsaber hilt-deep in the dirt.

“I mean, I’m not really complaining. At least you’re acknowledging I exist.”

Kanan meant to answer, but Ezra ripped up a boulder from the ground and threw it at him, making him duck and roll to one side. He followed it with another, ripped from the dirt where Kanan landed, just enough to knock him in the chin and onto his back.

Kanan landed with a grunt – again – and not much motivation to get up.

He looked entreatingly up toward the sky instead, quietly begging for an end to Ezra’s ability to make him speechless.

Ezra moved to stand over him, humming blade pointed down at his throat. Kanan let his own shut off, dropping his head to the ground, his grip and the rest of him going promptly limp. Conceding defeat.

Ezra raised an eyebrow, surprised and…a little disappointed…that he’d given up so easily. Sweat on his brow made Ezra’s hair cling dark against his skin. His eyes were bright. They were both dirty, flushed and out of breath from the workout. Kanan felt the heat waft off his face, and he gulped, wanting to think it was the sun overhead and the activity making him overly warm and not the memory of what it had felt like to be in a similar situation…when he was Ezra’s captive back in that cell…

Too late. 

Ezra noticed.

He knew.

“Guess I win?” he said, tipping his chin up.

“Guess so,” Kanan murmured.

Ezra hummed, and Kanan watched as his gaze over-blatantly roved down his body, looking him over. The tip of his lightsaber wavered just a little as his thoughts wandered, and Kanan dug his fingers into the dirt at his sides. Needing something to hold on to. He tried not to breathe, holding himself very, very still.

“You know,” said Ezra, conversational, gesturing with the lightsaber. “In some cultures, if I spared your life, that’d mean you were my servant forever.”

Kanan met his eyes, just a little challenging.

“The Sith teach you that?”

Ezra’s mouth tilted up to one side, challenging right back.

“They taught me that if you want something, you take it.”

He moved the blade away, and stepped in to plant both his boots to either side of Kanan’s waist.

Kanan froze. His heart relocated to his throat.

Ezra shut the lightsaber off, hooking it back onto his belt.

Then he dropped to his knees, plopping his weight down right over Kanan’s hips. Kanan grunted – maybe squeaked a little – and reeled, overly aware of just what it was Ezra was sitting on.

“Ez…ra—!”

Ezra looked far too pleased with himself. As Kanan squirmed, Ezra caught his wrists, holding them out and to either side so Kanan couldn’t push back against his chest when he leaned in and kissed him.

It was more like a bite: Ezra’s teeth sinking into his lip to hold on. Harsh and demanding. Refusing to let him pull away. Kanan groan-grunted through his nose at the tiny sting and clenched his eyes shut tight, freezing absolutely still. War raged within over whether to stay that way and thus keep his and Ezra’s bodies from coming into any more contact than they already were, or to try and push him off, and risk the grinding together of certain parts that would most likely happen.

He wound up doing nothing, letting the kiss ride itself out, the taut stillness slowly but surely bleeding out of him the longer it went on. He relaxed, eased against Ezra’s hold, and felt Ezra lessen his grip in return. He pulled his mouth away and Kanan felt the throb linger on his lips where he’d been, his heart kick-starting back to life, breath staggering to make up for the sudden sprint of it.

He blinked his eyes open and looked at him, dazed, taking a moment for his vision to come back into focus.

When it did, Ezra was there, looking at him intently and just a touch petulant.

“You don’t have to hold back,” he said, softly between them, still keeping hold of Kanan’s wrists but drawing them closer to himself. Pressing them to his chest. “Don’t you want me?”

“Of course I do,” Kanan muttered, perfectly wretched. He winced, admitting it out loud as much as to himself.

“Then why won’t you take me?”

Kanan ducked his head. He looked away, to one side. Ezra didn’t waste the opportunity of his exposed neck and leaned in, nuzzling against his skin. Kissing beneath the line of his jaw.

Kanan shivered. He had to close his eyes again.

“You don’t have to hold back.” Ezra whispered it this time, his breath soft. “If it’s all that Jedi teaching still in your head, you don’t have to listen to it. You’re not a Jedi anymore, Kanan. Neither of us are.”

“It’s not that…”

“Then what is it?” Ezra touched his hair, a gentleness in his caress as he smoothed it back from Kanan’s face. Breathed his air. Like he was suddenly the mentor between them, needing to soothe and reassure. “I don’t want us to be like this…I miss you.”

He rolled his hips, suddenly, overly suggestive, as if to add weight to his argument. Kanan’s insides clenched and all his thought processes promptly went south.

“Ezra…” He whined. His insides screamed and his mind reeled, violently warring with each other. Why was he holding himself back? Why wasn’t he rolling Ezra over right now and claiming his mouth? It wasn’t the Jedi training embedded too deep to escape in the roots of his conscience. He knew the Order was dead. He’d abandoned most of their tenets already. This would hardly be new.

It wasn’t out of deference to Hera. He could still hear her words, echoing stronger in his thoughts than any lecture from the temple.

_…if you have the chance to make a connection with someone, you take it…_

Ezra’s hand cupped the back of his neck. His breath puffed against Kanan’s pulse with every word.

“Is it Hera?”

“N…no…” Kanan shivered. He moved his hands to Ezra’s arms, just…holding onto him. “She…kinda gave her blessing, actually.”

Ezra blinked. He leaned back, putting pressure exactly where Kanan didn’t want it.

“What, really?”

Kanan grimaced, but nodded.

Ezra lit up.

“Alright!” He leaned forward, enthusiasm and eagerness quick to return, planting his hands on Kanan’s chest to push him to the ground. Kanan’s shoulders hit the dirt but he raised his hand, blocking Ezra’s mouth before they could kiss again.

Ezra smacked it away.

“What?” he demanded, growing fierce. “Is it because you still think I’m a little kid?” He leaned in, his hands curling closed on Kanan’s chest, drawing in fistfuls of his tunic to pull it tight. “I’m not, you know. If you want…” His voice dipped. Low. Suggestive. “I could show you?”

“I believe you.” Kanan’s voice broke a little, squirming as the discomfort between them mounted. “Your…lightsaber’s digging into my hip…”

“That’s not my lightsaber.”

Kanan looked up at him, a mixture of horrified and hovering on the edge of a burst of laughter. Ezra just smiled, only half apologetic. That sincerity that Kanan had come to know from him so well was a physical pull at his heart, and he couldn’t stop his hand from rising. Catching the back of Ezra’s head to bring them together, brows touching with a sense of connection that ran deep. Breathing each other’s air.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what it is!” Kanan groaned, pained, as he held onto him. Ezra held his wrists, kept him close wherever he could. “I think…it’s…I’m afraid.”

“Afraid?” Ezra tried to laugh. Tried to maintain the sense of lightness. Playful banter. “You?”

It didn’t work.

Kanan closed his eyes, gravely severe.

“And that fear can lead to—”

“Don’t. Don’t do that.” Ezra touched a hand to his brow. He brushed back Kanan’s hair from his face.

Kanan could see his individual lashes.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked, echoing with unconscious awareness the same words Kanan had spoken to him long ago.

Kanan took a deep breath.

“I think,” he said, with a sound of hesitation. “You.”

Ezra blinked, sitting back in surprise. And then…shame. His gaze slipped down and to one side, even as he brushed a thumb over the back of Kanan’s palm.

“It’s Malachor, isn’t it? What I did.”

“It’s not that—”

“How can it not be? You think the dark side’s too strong in me? I’m, what, tainted?”

“I think the Force is strong in you. Sometimes too strong.” Kanan winced even as he said it. But, once it was out, he realized the truth within. “I have…absolutely no idea what you’re capable of, Ezra. There’s a power in you that’s beyond me, and that’s frightening. You have the potential to go so far. To do so much. I…might not be able to keep up.”

He had to close his eyes for a moment. Brace himself against the sudden sting and burn at the bridge of his nose.

“I guess…what I’m saying is…I’m afraid of being left behind. You’ll go somewhere I can’t follow one day. I’ve already lost so much…I don’t want to lose you, too.”

“You know I’d never—”

Ezra stopped himself. He flinched and ducked his head.

He already had.

Ezra looked down between them, his hands distracting themselves with the lining of Kanan’s tunic. Kanan felt Ezra’s heartache like it was his own. Angry regret and remorse. Nowhere to go but to coil back in on himself.

He reached out to touch Ezra’s hair.

“You told me once,” Ezra murmured, “that admitting you’re afraid of something makes you braver than most.” He leaned into Kanan’s hand, pressing like a cat to be petted.

Kanan huffed a laugh.

“You remember that?”

Ezra looked away. He drew in a breath, and Kanan sensed his preparation. He watched his eyes and the places where Ezra’s hair fell and how the sun landed on his skin.

He was so unbelievably beautiful.

“Kanan…If anyone’s gonna be worried about being left behind,” Ezra said, a sardonic half-laugh as he hid his eyes behind his hair. “It should be me.”

Kanan blinked.

“Huhn?”

“Back in that Jedi Temple…the one we found here on Lothal? I had a vision.”

“Yeah?”

“And you…in it, you said…that you’d die before you ever let anyone hurt me.”

“I would,” Kanan said, automatically. Without thinking.

“Well I don’t want you to!” Ezra pressed both his fists down into Kanan’s stomach as he leaned forward, a new emphasis. “You did the same thing back on Malachor. And before that with the comm tower! If anyone has to be worried about being hurt and left behind, it’s me, Kanan! Because you’re so infuriatingly self sacrificing, you don’t think about how other people might feel about losing you!”

Kanan didn’t really have an argument for that.

“Uhhh…”

Ezra’s vehemence continued.

“I want you here, with me. Hera wants you here. All of us—so, just…don’t be so quick to throw yourself away!”

“I’m…sorry. I won’t—”

“You won’t.” Ezra cupped the back of his head. He held him up and looked to Kanan’s eyes, his own hard with a determined inner light. “I won’t let you.”

Kanan pursed his lips.

“You probably didn’t mean that to sound as threatening as it did just now, so I’m just gonna—”

Ezra kissed him. Anything else Kanan meant to say was promptly forgotten as he raised his arms, combed his fingers up into Ezra’s dark hair, dug in to hold on. They fell together, back to the ground, impact and Ezra’s hands beneath his tunic stealing whatever breath he still claimed. Kanan closed his eyes and let Ezra fill his senses: blotting out the sun, blotting out the world, his feel and sound and smell and taste sharpening the whole of existence to focus it down to the one single point of their connection. The light that bound them at the heart. The sort of bond no amount of fear or anger or hatred could break.

“Okay, compromise,” Ezra said, hot against his lips when they broke for a breath, refusing to part further than that. “I won’t fall to the dark side, and you don’t sacrifice yourself for some greater good. I want you to live. With me. As long as you can.”

“I can’t really promise that,” Kanan cringed, fighting for coherent thought through the haze of sheer want that gripped him. “But…I’ll try.”

Ezra grinned. He cupped Kanan’s chin and dragged his tongue across his lips, lewd.

“Do or do not,” he teased.

Kanan whimpered, no will or wits left in him to counter. He unlocked his being, and let himself open underneath him, kissing Ezra as hard and as long as he could.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Soooooooo…up until now this fic has been rated Teen, though upon the posting of this chapter I upped it to Mature.
> 
> So if you’re here for the Teen content, stop reading now, because what follows next is gratuitous smut…which I never intended to write out – but I never intended this thing to be seven chapters long, either. :-x
> 
> Thank you for sticking with me this far, either way. <333

They wound up back at Ezra’s abandoned comm tower.

It wasn’t a short trip: a long walk over the rolling hills and grasslands took them further and further away from the Ghost. They held hands, communicating with a squeeze, no need for words, a glance aside and shy eye contact making them both break down into boyish giggles.

They barely waited to get all the way to the top of the hoverlift.

The door to Ezra’s old room swished open and they fell inside, already a tangle of arms and stumbling feet. Knocking into junk strewn across the floor because to look would have meant to move away from each other’s mouths.

They finally fell against a wall, Kanan’s shoulders hitting the metal with Ezra pressing in against him. Kissing frantic. Impatient.

Ezra dragged his hands down the front of Kanan’s chest, earning a deep groan as his fingers raked through the fabric of his tunic. Breath came short and heat wafted off their skin. Touching. Tasting. A hurried, frantic exploration both eager and emphatic, with the breaking down of several walls to let tides of long-held desire spill free.

Ezra planted a hand on Kanan’s chest, pressing him back to the wall with the barest pulse of Force power. Kanan grunted, held fast, breaking off their kiss with a groan of mild complaint. But his resistance was minimal as he dropped his head back to rest against the cool metal, meeting Ezra’s eyes levelly. Heatedly.

Ezra locked their gaze with a meaningful look full of intent, and held him there just long enough to make sure Kanan stayed, before he slid down to his knees in front of him.

Kanan made a choked sound.

“You don’t…have to,” he gasped, but Ezra was already pulling the front of his tunic free from his belt. Undoing the front clasp of his pants.

“But I want to,” he said, his teeth a white slash against his skin as he grinned, dark with a mischief. Then he added, just to play dirty: “Master.”

That was it.

Kanan was done for.

Kanan let his weight sag with a whimpered resignation, the wall the only thing holding him up. His hands dug in to Ezra’s shoulders, and it was all he could do to hold on for dear life as Ezra tugged the front of his pants open, freeing him to the cooler air.

Then there was a hand on him. A tongue. A wet mouth, taking him in, slavering wet and unhesitant. Unafraid. Just as Ezra was in everything.

Kanan’s breath left him all at once in a wordless gasp. His head fell back and he closed his eyes, his jaw slack, unable to take the sight of Ezra going down on him as well as the feel.

It felt… _so_ good…

Ezra knew what he was doing. Cupping Kanan at the base of him. Holding. Supporting. Gentle kneads as he nuzzled and kissed, dragged his tongue along his length excrutiatingly slow, barely-there scrapes of his teeth where Kanan was softest – and a little ticklish – making him gasp and jerk. Ezra’s hand that braced his weight pressed into Kanan’s thigh, holding him still and out of the way, and he would suck just at the tip of Kanan’s head with flicks of his tongue and maddening restraint until devouring him suddenly again. All at once.

Kanan could scarcely think, let alone believe it.

If Ezra had been half as disciplined and focused in his Jedi training as he was in… _this_ …he would have been an incredible student.

As it was, Kanan could only choke the sound of his name, clawing at his hair, cradling him close in time with the bob of his head. His mind a haze of incoherent bliss.

A flicker of a vision came to him – or maybe just a fear, drawn from his own jealousy – of Ezra with someone else. Someone who wasn’t him. Someone they knew, or – worse – that Sith, learning to do this. Learning about passion and the power it held in a number of different ways, including pleasure so slow and drawn and honed it may as well have been torture.

Kanan groaned with a roll of nauseating envy.

Anger followed the fear.

Kanan wanted to be the only one to know Ezra like this. He didn’t want there to be anyone else. He wanted to be the only one to see Ezra’s face when it was slack, his eyes half closed. The only one to hear the sound he made in the back of his throat when he took him in. The only one to know the taste of his mouth. The heat of him surrounding—

“I don’t want anyone else,” Ezra whispered, answering Kanan’s thoughts. Or did he imagine it? The feel of breath against his hip. “I want you…”

Kanan pushed suddenly against Ezra’s arms, gasping as he pulled him free. Yanked him up to his feet. His eyes were wide and dark and Ezra looked startled as Kanan held him a moment, staring, then pulled him into an impulsive kiss.

His tongue swirled into Ezra’s mouth, tasting him – tasting himself in him – and the grounding provided distraction and a moment to refocus. Catch his breath.

It was going to be over too quickly otherwise.

“Ezra,” Kanan breathed, dazed, looking to him while they were close with a fierce, heated tenderness as he brushed the scars on his cheek. “Together…”

Ezra’s eyes and cheeks darkened as he understood. He nodded, a quirk of his mouth still half turned up in a confident grin.

They kissed, hands fumbling between them as they tried to simultaneously undress each other. Kanan’s tunic came off easy. His pants, already undone, he kicked off and to one side.

Ezra’s jumpsuit was more difficult.

“How many clasps does this thing have?” Kanan growled, frustrated when he had to pull his attention from Ezra’s mouth to look.

“Oh,” said Ezra, with a cheeky grin, leaning back and doing absolutely nothing to help. “Like…eight?”

Eventually they made it to the bed.

Ezra’s old bed: a haphazardly cobbled together frame and piles of mismatched blankets and pillows. It was pushed up against the wall, extra padding added to the metalwork to keep out the cold. It was the bed he would have used as a boy, curled up alone after his parents were taken. Kanan could feel the resonant emotion as they drew close – loneliness, sorrow, hunger, determination – and felt maybe the smallest twinge of guilt, doing this here.

Ezra had been a child such a short time ago.

But, then again, had he ever really been one? Even when they first met?

They fell onto the pile of blankets, Kanan’s back coming to rest on the worn softness. Ezra leaned in to fill the space above him, covering him in his shadow, hand trailing the lean path of his chest as he kissed him. Nuzzled and nipped at this throat and collar, teeth scraping his beard. His hand cupped the back of Kanan’s head and found his way by feel to the band that held back Kanan’s hair. A quick tug, and it came loose. He let the band drop away to one side.

Kanan’s hair fell around him and he exhaled with the feel, something symbolic in the gesture. Ezra’s fingers combed through the tangled strands, smoothing it back out of his face, each touch feather soft and as confident as the last.

He smiled, just looking at him, and pinned Kanan’s hand down against the pillows just over his shoulder as he kissed him.

Kanan was undone.

Over and over again he kept using the word “confident” when it came to Ezra, but no other word described him so perfectly. It had been his defining quality – and his biggest flaw – since they’d first met. It was what attracted others to him. That quality that would one day make him a great leader.

Karabast…

He even _kissed_ confidently.

Kissing Ezra was so different from kissing Hera. Not…better. Or worse. Just…different.

Hera was collected. Practical. Not unenthusiastic, but she realized time was a commodity and there was always some pressing urgency in their lives. So when they had a little bit of time together, it tended to be…well…to the point. Passionate. Swift. A quick delve into the sensuality brimming just beneath her commanding exterior. Kissing Ezra was more like…like…

Ezra reached up, grabbing and yanking a handful of Kanan’s hair.

Hard.

Kanan squawked, cut-off, as heat shot straight down to his groin.

“Stop thinking about Hera,” Ezra growled against his throat.

Kanan blinked up at him, breathless and flushed.

He frowned a little.

“How did you know I—?”

“I don’t know.” Ezra frowned back. “I could just tell.”

It was a stumble in the proceedings, but it didn’t last long.

Ezra looked at him with a petulance. A hint of possessive indignation in his eyes. Kanan wondered if he’d worn a similar look when he thought about Ezra being with someone else.

But also…

Also he just stared, the sight of Ezra leaning over him like this, his hair falling tangled over his face, the light on his skin a gift Kanan didn’t believe for an instant he deserved.

Ezra was…

Well.

He was no slender boy anymore. Not in the least. His formative years spent on the streets of Lothal and being woefully undernourished meant he would never fully lose that leanness about him. He would never be as tall or as large as other humans his age. But he had developed…quite nicely…over the time they’d known each other. There was a broadness in his shoulders now that hadn’t been there before. He’d gained some height. The barest dark brush of hair across his chest made a faint trail down to his stomach, further on to his naval, begging to be traveled.

Ezra maintained his pout but Kanan looked at him with a new wonder, unable to chart the path in his memory that had led them there, but so unbelievably grateful.

Ezra’s pout faded, replaced by a darker blush as Kanan kept staring.

He forgot what it was they had stopped long enough to talk about.

“Kanan?” said Ezra, reverently quiet and prompting, the way he always used to when making a hesitant bid for his attention.

Kanan breathed, and answered in a way he hadn’t realized he’d wanted to say Ezra’s name for a long, long time.

“Ezra…”

They touched, coming together again with a kiss. Realigning.

After that, there was no holding back.

Ezra rose up onto his knees, tired of waiting. He held Kanan’s face and caught his mouth, kissing him – _owning_ him – and grabbed at his thigh to guide it up around his waist. Kanan closed his eyes and exhaled, a sense of surrender in the way he eased. Forgetting anything else. Feeling his body open up instead. His hand that was still free slid over Ezra’s back and shoulders, spreading his fingers to feel him, each touch new. Exploring. Discovering. Finding his way to where he knew Ezra wanted him.

He didn’t know how he knew. He just…knew.

His hand brushed the inside of Ezra’s thigh and took gentle hold of him, caressing the hot throb of his length between his fingers. Ezra broke their kiss with a ragged gasp, all his breath escaping him at once, passion a flash in the depths of his eyes as he looked to Kanan through a sweat-damp fall of hair.

“Touch me, Kanan,” he said, unneccesarily, but just to feel the words slip over his tongue. Hear them rasped so privately between them. “I want you to.”

It was a pleading request, and an order, and heat roiled in Kanan’s belly as he obeyed, arching his neck up to chase after thier kiss. His hand moved, stroked between Ezra’s legs, feeling his staggering breath against his lips and the way he trembled and the sounds he made through his nose. Ezra pulled his hair again when Kanan nearly stopped, because he knew Kanan liked it.

Kanan gasped against his mouth, and kept stroking.

They were in sync again, Ezra rocking his hips up into Kanan’s touch, panting hot and wet into each other’s mouths when their heated kissing broke, starved for air. Ezra licked the sweat from Kanan’s skin and pressed onto his throat with just the barest touch of the Force. Holding him down. Making Kanan’s erection ache.

_“Ezra…”_

Ezra grabbed Kanan’s thighs, pushing him wide and open, a sense of urgency in him that shoved aside all need for anything else. What he meant to do jolted through Kanan like a bolt of electricity, and he stopped. Jerked. Stiffening, holding his breath for the moment their eyes met.

“What?” Ezra breathed, holding him.

“NnnhhnnIiii don’t think I’m ready for that.” Kanan swallowed hard. Tried to pretend his voice didn’t break or tremble as much as it did. “Not yet.”

Ezra just smiled. He laughed out a breath.

“Okay. Okay…”

He kissed him to reassure, letting him down to instead climb into his lap, one hand over the pound of Kanan’s heart to keep him in place.

He straddled his waist, took hold of Kanan in his hand.

Kanan’s pulse staggered and his throat closed tight as he knew – felt – what Ezra meant to do next.

“I don’t have—” he started to say when Ezra silenced him, sliding his tongue into his mouth.

“I don’t care,” he whispered, and positioned Kanan’s member against his rear. Kanan watched, felt, astonished and breathless, as Ezra smeared what had leaked from him so far over his entrance, slicking it wet. Perfectly shameless, lascivious joy colored his smirk at what broken look must have been on Kanan’s face as he did it.

Then he slid down onto him, biting his lip and pushing a deep groan out of them both as they were joined at last.

Kanan…just touched him. He laid his hands along his thighs. Caught Ezra when he buckled forward, bringing them close together again. Foreheads all but pressed together.

Kanan couldn’t know what face he was making, but…what he saw there reflected in Ezra’s eyes undid him.

Astonishment. A base, naked bearing, his expression slack in pleasure and just a little bit of shock.

His mouth was open as he panted, skin slick in the slanting light. Kanan pulled him to him, kissing his mouth. His neck. His shoulder. Ezra trembled and held onto him, whispering affirmations of his name, and Kanan held onto him in return. Held him up. Kept him from falling.

And then they were moving together. As one.

Slow at first, a tender dance of give and take, exploring and leaning and holding and supporting. Ezra moved his hips – slow, undulating grinds – and latched his arms around Kanan’s neck. Keeping him close. Kanan’s face buried into his shoulder and he held onto the small of his back, when one hand didn’t sneak down between them to fondle where Ezra’s hardness was trapped.

“Kanan,” Ezra whispered, bowing his head forward. “Kanan… _please_ …”

Kanan sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth.

He held it.

Then in a surge of energy he cupped Ezra’s rear – Ezra had a nice one – and lifted him, rolling over to plant Ezra down on his back, legs flung up in the air as he drove into him, hard, passion vented in the heat of his strokes and Ezra’s voice crying out to the ceiling as he just _held on_ , let himself be taken, let himself feel the depths of Kanan’s capacity to care and love and give.

And Ezra loved every moment of it.

“Kanan—!” he warned, moaning. Pulling a fistful of his hair. Burrowing into his neck as Kanan fucked him.

“I know,” Kanan gasped over his shoulder, one hand splayed across his back, the core of him robbed of his ability for any greater speech. Everything was sensation. “I know…let it happen...”

Ezra pressed on the still-tender scar tissue over Kanan’s shoulder, wrapping around him.

“I love you,” he whispered, ground through a tight throat.

Then everything clenched. Nails dug into Kanan’s skin. A hand pulled his hair. Kanan bowed his head into Ezra’s shoulder and let his breath out all at once. Ezra’s cry choked off mid-breath, and then he arched, completion ricocheting through him that Kanan could feel echoing in himself, pulling him in like the inexorable draw of gravity towards Ezra’s star.

_“Ezra…”_

They held on to each other, gasped, shuddered, and then they were both falling.

*****

Afterwards, they tangled together in the blankets, a hot mess of twisted fabrics and damp sweat smell. Kanan sprawled on his back, limp, every muscle sore and satisfied. Ezra lay with his head on his chest, smiling, his fingers twined with Kanan’s to hold up and examine their hands in the waning light.

“So much for ‘there is no passion,’” Ezra hummed.

Kanan grunted.

“Now who’s quoting the code?”

He blinked his eyes open sleepily, lazy and indulgent in the way they slid across to see Ezra there, so close to him. His smile so bright in the ambient gold.

“Not much point in living if you’re not passionate about something.”

Ezra hummed, and tucked their arms back down between them. He rolled closer, snuggling around Kanan like a cat seeking warmth. He hugged him with arms and legs wrapped around, and closed his eyes with a long, contented sigh. Ready to sleep.

Kanan rested his cheek against Ezra’s hair, waiting a long moment before he said anything.

“Ezra? I think…we might be Force bonded.”

“Great,” Ezra grunted, his voice muffled. “What’s that?”

“It’s a…an especially deep connection between two Force users. It’s rare, but…I’ve heard of it happening in cases of extreme healing.” Kanan looked down at Ezra’s hand on his chest. Stroked the back of it with his thumb. “When one person puts a lot of their life energy into another, they become joined forever.”

“Joined,” Ezra mumbled, without energy. “Like…married?”

“More like unavoidably linked.” Kanan breathed. “It just seems…we keep knowing what the other one is thinking.”

“More’n just from being around each other too long?”

“Yeah.”

A quiet pause. Kanan could hear the wind outside the tower whistling through tiny cracks in the metal plating. It sounded distant. Like time flowing away. He could hear Ezra’s breathing, and feel the pulse of his heart.

He was willing to bet that if he measured his own, they would be beating in time together.

“Can you tell what I’m thinking right now?” Ezra murmured.

A fleeting impression flashed through Kanan’s thoughts. Something particularly lewd.

Kanan grimaced.

“ _Where_ did you learn that?”

“From Zeb.” Ezra lifted his head, looking up at him to grin. Shameless. “He thought I didn’t know where he kept those holomags under his mattress.”

Kanan couldn’t help it. He looped one arm around Ezra’s neck to pull him close and kiss him, a swell of affection and endearment in his heart. Ezra laughed, leaning into him, and came to rest even more on top of him, cheek to his chest.

For awhile they were quiet again, just breathing.

Until Ezra asked: “So what does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” Kanan mumbled. “But we probably won’t have a lot of secrets from each other anymore.”

Ezra shrugged.

“I’m okay with that.”

“I also think…if one of us falls to the dark side, it means they’ll drag the other person along with them.”

“Oh.” Ezra was quiet again. Thoughtful. Until his relentless optimism showed itself again. “But then, that also means, if one of us stays in the light, they can pull the other one back?”

Kanan didn’t answer for a moment, his eyes turned over Ezra’s head towards one of the tower windows.

“Maybe,” he said.

He kissed Ezra’s hair.

“Let’s hope we never have to find out.”


End file.
